rPPING 


"ONlrS 


APP1NESS 


HARRIET  PRE5COTT  SPOFFORD 


AUTHOR  OP 

Inheritance,"  "Tr>e  Scarlet  Poppy,"  "Hester  5t&r>ley  at 
St.  A\arHs,"  "H«artb  arj^  House,"  Etc.,  Etc. 


Published  by 

THE  CHRISTIAN  HERALD 

LOUIS  KLOPSCH,  Proprietor 
BIBLE  HOUSE,  /SEW   YORK,    1897 


Copyright,  1897,  by 
Louis  KLOPSCH 


N  all  Ages,  the  Search  for  Happiness  has  been  the  ultimate  aim 
and  desire  of  human  effort — Happiness  here  and  hereafter.  To 
those  Searchers,  in  every  station  in  life,  this  Book  is  dedicated, 
in  the  hope  that  it  may  be  the  means  of  guiding  them,  by  pleasant 
paths,  to  the  true  Temple  of  Happiness,  whence  flow  those  delectable 
streams  that  refresh  the  hearts  and  rejoice  the  souls  of  all  who  enter  the 
quest  with  a  pure  and  resolute  purpose. 

Happiness  is  equally  attainable  to  the  poor  and  the  rich,  the  youth 
and  the  veteran  ;  and  though  multitudes  have  missed  the  Path,  STEP- 
PING STONES  TO  HAPPINESS  will  lead  them  back  to  the  way,  by  which 
they  may  surely  find  it.  May  they,  in  turn,  extend  loving  help  to  other 
struggling  wayfarers  on  the  same  journey. 


Go,  Book  of  mine,  go  forth 

And  give  thy  cheer, 
Go  where  upon  the  hearth 

The  fire  burns  clear; 
Go  where  the  evening  lamp 

A  rosy  glow 
Sheds  while  the  storms  without 

Their  wild  blasts  blow. 


Go  under  greenwood  shade  ; 

Find  open  doors 
Where  babes  like  sunbeams  play 

About  the  floors, 
And  say  the  hand  that  wrought 

Would  only  bless 
And  lend  the  simple  art 

Of  happiness. 


Go  then,  the  world  is  wide, 

And  give  thy  cheer; 
Perhaps  some  tender  heart 

Will  hold  thee  dear; 
Perhaps  some  pleasant  hand 

Thy  pages  turn; 
Perhaps  some  gentle  soul 

Thy  message  learn ! 


OfiHEN  one  writes  for  publication,  however   great  the  surrouqdiqg 
solitude,  th[ere  is  always  oqe  compaqion  present, 

It  is  the  personage  known  in  literature  as  the  Geqtle  Reader. 
This  readar  is  kiqder  thaq  one's  self;  has  almost  as  much  to  do 
with  the  progress  of  the  pages  ;  cheers,  eqcourages,  and  helps  witrj  both^ 
subtle  aqd  outright  sympathy, 

And  wr\en  the  manuscript  has  goqe  to  do  its  work  in  tr^e  world, 
it  is  not  of  the  great  public  that  tr)e  writer  thinks,  but  of  this  single 
debonair  reader.  It  is  for  those  of  like  rqaqners  aqd  feeliqgs  tr^at  these 
chapters  have  been  written,  Geqtle  Reader,  out  iq  th[e  unknown,  be 
geqtle  still  !  Whoever  and  wherever  you  may  be,  wr^eq  you  opeq  theee 
leaves  remerqber  your  old  kiqdliness  aqd  forbear  to  criticise  too  r}arshly 
th[e  pen  tr^at  would  help  you  on  the  way  across  the  Stepping  Stones  to 
Happiness. 

HARRIET  PRESCOTT  SPOFFORD. 


CHAPTER  I  ..................................................... 

The  Use  of  the  Present  —  On  a  Texas  Prairie  —  A  Mirage  —  The 
Present  Time—  The  Uses  of  This  World  —  Advancing  Years  — 
Looking  Backward—  Disenchantment  —  Illusions  —  Idle  Re- 
grets. 


PAGE. 

..17 


CHAPTER  II  ...................................  ................ 

Going  Over  Dry  Shod  —  Perpetual  Hope  —  An  Ideal  World  —  A 
Child's  Discovery  —  The  Surprise  —  Mrs.  Mulgrave's  Story. 


CHAPTER  III 

A  Pause  By  the  Way — Self- Reliance  and  Self-Reverence — St. 
Augustine's  Dream — The  Spiritual  Mind — Reticence — Real 
Troubles — The  Armor  of  Patience — A  Mutual  Dependence- 
Man's  Majesty — The  Happy  Warrior— Miss  Moggaridge's  Pro- 
vider. 


CHAPTER    IV 

A  Family  Tree — Household  Association — Plutarch's  Advice — 
The  Story  of  Xerxes  and  Ariamenes — Love  of  Ancestors — The 
Coat  of  Arms. 

(7) 


.88 


8  CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

CTIAPTER  V 99 

A  Home  in  Town — Owning  the  House — The  Sense  of  Perma- 
nence— Moving — Inside  the  House — The  Vacation — Advan- 
tages of  Town  Life — City  Children — Music  at  Home — The 
Piano-forte — Music  Abroad — The  Opera — Shopping — In  the 
Street  Car— The  Cheery  Town— The  City  Parlor— Old  China— 
The  Spinning  Wheel  in  the  Parlor— The  Distaff— The  Spinster 
—  The  Adventures  of  a  Pound  of  Cotton — Society — The  Gay 
Season — City  Window  Gardens — Louise  Forester's  Story. 

CHAPTER  VI 151 

Under  Green  Boughs — Comparative  Views  of  Town  and  Coun- 
try— Great  Ideas  Start  in  City — In  a  Suburban  Town — The 
Love  of  Nature — Michelet's  Twilight  Experience — Sunlight. 

CHAPTER  VII 167 

Vine  and  Fig  Tree — The  Garden — The  Almanac — The  Apple- 
Tree — Woman  in  Agriculture — Among  the  Lake  Dwellings — 
A  Picturesque  Sight — The  Story  of  Mrs.  Royal's  Garden. 

CHAPTER  VIII i93 

The  House  in  the  Country — Necessary  Foresight — The  Piazza 
—In  the  Furnishing— The  Parlor— The  Library— The  Rosillon 
House. 

CHAPTER   IX 216 

The  Health  of  the  Home — Old  Water-courses  in  Town — Rock 
and  Gravel— The  Cellar— The  Prevention  That  is  Better  than 
Cure — The  Only  Curse  on  the  House — We  or  Providence  to 
Blame — Children's  Diseases — Disinfectants — The  Scarlet  Fever 


CONTENTS.  9 

PAGE. 

—The  Children  of  the  Poor— The  Lively  Fly— At  Autumn 
Time— The  Birds  When  the  Days  Shorten— Light-Hearted 
October— By  the  Hearth. 

CHAPTER  X 243 

The  Light  of  the  House— The  Mother— The  Ideal  Mother— 
The  Everyday  Mother — The  Story  of  Old  Margaret  and  Her 
Boy. 

CHAPTER  XI 260 

A  Well-Spring  of  Joy— The  Baby— The  Care  of  the  Baby— The 
Moral  Growth  of  the  Child — Help  From  the  Great  Educators 
— Froebel — The  Kindergarten — The  Gifts  in  Froebel's  System 
— School  Another  World — On  Visiting  a  Kindergarten — John 
Wesley's  Mother— Slojd— The  Happy  Result— The  Story  of 
the  Hurricane  Light. 

CHAPTER   XII 306 

Other  Children — Medicine  Rather  Than  Punishment — Hered- 
ity— Sparing  the  Rod — Loving  Children — They  Who  Really 
Love  Children — Troublesome  Children — Keeping  Silence — 
Amusing  the  Small  People — With  Pencil  and  Paper — A  New 
Game — Another  Game — The  Story  of  Laddy's  Burglar. 

CHAPTER   XIII 343 

Angels  Unawares — What  a  Boy  Thought  of  His  Grandmother — 
Old  Age — Growing  Old  Gracefully — The  Satisfactions  of  Age 
—The  Refinement  of  Old  Age— The  Town  "Lady"— Ailments 
in  the  Family — The  Right  Sleep — The  Grandmother's  Charm 
— Delight  in  Poetry — The  Story  of  a  Perpetual  Thanksgiving. 


,0  CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER  XIV 376 

About  Pets — Poor  Dog  Tray — Famous  Dogs — The  Dog  in 
Literature — Harmless  Necessary  Cat — The  Cat's  Beauty — The 
Cat's  Virtues— The  Cat  a  Fireside  Ornament— The  Little 
Egyptian  Cat— The  Cat's  Usefulness — The  Norway  Rat — The 
Bird  in  the  Cage— Pretty  Poll— The  Children  and  the  Parrot- 
Famous  Parrots — A  Kerry  Cow — Advantages  of  the  Cow — 
Pegasus — The  Woman  Who  Used  To  Drive — The  Woman 
Who  Drives  Now. 

CHAPTER  XV 395 

The  Household  Conduct — The  Ideal  Household — Managing 
and  Ruling — Tyranny  and  its  Result  in  Cunning — Working 
Together — Daily  Cares — The  Hired  Housekeeper — The  Strong- 
Box — A  Vacation — Schools  For  Cooks — A  Radical  Procedure — 
Old  Cookery  Books — Ancient  Feasts — The  Peacock  at  Banquets 
—A  Bat  tie  at  Table — Some  Economies — The  Englishwoman's 
Economy — Saving  On  a  Small  Scale — Old  Dishes — Different 
Kitchens — Undreamed  Dishes — The  Mushroom — The  Story  of 
Sylvia  Dexter. 

CHAPTER  XVI .' 429 

Work — Mrs.  Browning's  Word — The  Value  of  Work  to  Char- 
acter— All  Creation  Works — Conscience  in  the  Work — Work 
Here  and  Abroad — Love  of  Art  Equaling  Conscience— Those 
Who  Are  Down  On  Their  Luck— Rest  After  Work— The  Rest 
of  Travel— The  Mind  in  Travel— The  Reader  in  Travel — 
Travel  in  Our  Own  Land. 


CONTENTS.  ii 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER  XVII 449 

Love  of  Others — Associated  Charities — Transmission  of  In- 
itiated Organisms — Extremes  of  Wealth  and  Poverty — Giving 
at  the  Door — Lovely  Examples — A  Degrading  Course — The 
Poor  a  Benison — What  the  Poor  Have  Done — The  Story  of 
Anstress. 

CHAPTER  XVIII 472 

The  Genial  Temper — An  Unpleasant  Idiosyncrasy — Love  of 
Injury — Fancied  Slights — Quid  Pro  Quo — The  Undisciplined 
Temper— The  Sinners  Themselves— The  Sulky  Soul— A 
Remedy — The  Perfecting  of  the  World — Protoplasm  and  Dust 
—Right  and  Light — Transmuting  Clay — Self-Forgetfulness — 
The  Child's  Troubles— Another  World  To  Complete  This— 
Changing  Our  Condition  For  Another's — Rejoicing  in  An- 
other's Joy — The  Golden  Time  For  Love — On  Tranquil 
Heights — Hand  in  Hand  With  Angels — The  Riches  of  Angels 
— True  Happiness  At  Last — Matthew  Arnold's  Wish. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

The  Journey 1 8 

Bells  Ring  Love's  Story  Song 19 

As  We  Rolled  on  Through  This  Marvelous  Landscape 20 

Herd  of  Cattle  Coming  Down  to  Drink 22 

Solitude 25 

Truly  We  Are  Not  of  Their  Number 27 

At  Morning  We  Used  to  Feel  It  Was  Going  to  Be  Morning  All  Day.  ...  28 
The  Illusion  that  Surrounds  the  Dead  with  a  Halo  Is  Certainly  a  Blessed 

One 30 

The  Home  of  Childhood 32 

The  Contemptuous  Stare  of  Somebody  in  a  Paris  Hat 33 

Dripping  that  Wears  the  Stone 34 

Expectancy  a  much  more  Emphatic  Thing   than  Hope 35 

The  Bright  Drapery  of  Dreams  and  Pleasant  Fancies 37 

Never  Birds  Sang  as  I  Heard  Them 39 

In  the  Wave-Washed   Sand 41 

The  Ship  that  Is  Coming  into  Harbor 42 

If  It  had  Been  the  Queen  a-Commg  In 44 

You  Couldn't  Shut  a  Drawer 46 

That  Sea  View  Would  Be  Good  as  a  Picture 47 

I  Was  the  Most  Unhappy  Woman 49 

Dwelling  upon  the  Spiritual 53 

The  Sweet  Influence  of  a  Loving  Sympathy 57 

A  Happy  Face  Does  a  Service  to  Humanity 59 

"We  Are  Most  of  Us  Inclined  to  Sympathize 61 

(12) 


ILLUSTRATIONS.  13. 

PAGE. 

The  Good  Are  Lifting  Up  the  Bad 67 

To  Every  Earnest,  Striving  Soul 69 

A  Letter  Came  to  Miss  Ann 76 

The  Ship  Went  to  Pieces 80 

Bonds  of  Blood  Relationship 87 

The  Same  Mother's  Knee 89 

Reverence  of  the  Young  for  the  Old 91 

The  Stiff,  Prim  Likeness  cf  Some  Grandam 93 

Tenderness  for  Those  Dead  and  Gone 95 

The  Possession  of  a  Home 97 

Industry 100 

On  the  Wing 102 

Sunshine  of  Pleasant  Faces 104 

Steamer   Trips .  .  , 107 

Professors  Find  Their  Support  in  Cities 109. 

The  Music-room  Conservatory in 

Music's  Largest  Audiences  in  the  Town 113 

Shopping 115 

Satchel-bearing  Suburbans n'6 

The  Distaff 1 24 

The  Spinning-wheel 127 

Rude  as   the  Spinning-wheel  Seems  to  Us  Now 129 

Flock  of  Sheep 131 

(From  a  Painting  by  Anton   Mauve.) 

Always  a  Gay  Season  in  Town 134 

John  Ruskin 137 

(Bust  by  Sir  Edgar  Boehm,  R.  A.) 

Bowers  of  Loveliness 138 

Flowers 139 

Flowers  the  Only  Comfort  that  I  Had 140 

So  Still  and  Dark  and  Solemn "143 

A  Box  out  of  Every  Window  in  the  House 144 

I  Came  Home  with  Ladies'  Tresses 145 

The  Corner  of  My  Dear  Wild  Flowers 146 


i4  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE. 

This  Place  of  Enchantment 150 

You  Must  Have  Known  I  Loved  You 152 

The  Sweet  Look  that  Nature  Wears 154 

The  Loneliness  of  Rural  Regions 157 

A  Sewing  Circle 158 

Some  Lovely  Landscape 161 

Mountains  Lifting  Their  Heads  into  Heaven 162 

White  and  Innocent  Fields :  . .  1 63 

A  Luxury  of  Life  Is  Theirs  in  the  Spring 164 

The  Dark  Shadow  of  the  Branch -hung  Stream 166 

The  Twilight  Hour 168 

Every  Man  Loves  His  Garden 171 

The  Modest  Kitchen  Garden 173 

Title  Page  of  Poor  Richard's  Almanack  for  1733 177 

Who  Owns  an  Apple-tree  and  Does  not  Wish  for  Two? 180 

The  Harvest  of  the  Grain  Field 182 

Making  Grow  Where  Nothing  Grew  Before 185 

A  Picturesque  Object  in  the  Landscape 187 

(Painted  by  Jules  Breton. ) 

Itself  Draped  with  Vines 200 

Such  a  Place  Should  be  Made  Attractive 212 

Unable  to  Look  a  Man  in  the  Face 217 

Reeled  and  Fell  Backward 220 

Looking  Down  at  Him 222 

He  Remembered  the  Place 224 

Mother's    Devotion 248 

Sitting  and  Playing  His  Banjo 250 

Practicing  for  a  Long  Migration 256 

What  a  Singular  Charm  There  Is  about  the  First  Fire  of  Wood 263 

Rock  Me  to  Sleep,  Mother 268 

She  Spells  out  the  Lesson  with  Her  Child 274 

Beauty  and  Glory  of  Motherhood 276 

Helpless  Morsel  of  Humanity 286 


ILLUSTRATIONS.  15 

PAGE. 

The  Child  Will  Have  a  Love  of  Work 288 

The  Little  Face  Lies  Near  Her  Own 290 

The  Hurricane  Light-House 293 

Love  Lines  of  the  Kindergarten  Methods 308 

Not  to  Fail  in  Exhaustless  Gentleness. 310 

Little  Merchants 312 

The  Young  Expanding  Intellect 315 

Reprimanded 317 

The  Opening  Soul  of  Childhood 319 

Necessary  that  the  Little  Things  Should  Be  Made  Happy 321 

Love  of  the  Child  for  Drawing 323 

Monument  at  New  Plymouth  to  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 325 

A  Way  of  Making  It  a  Charming  Amusement 327 

He  Saw  the  Club  Roll  By 33 1 

Laddy  Slipped  Out  of  Bed 335 

The  Sweet  Serenity  of  Silver-haired  Age 345 

That  Tenderness  Felt  for  the  Old 347 

Gayeties  of  Her  Grandchildren 349 

Gentle  and  Well  Bred,  and  that  Is  the  Whole  Lady 353 

Drawing  and  Sculpture  During  the  Palaeolithic  Epoch 364 

Her  Few  Letters  Were  Spasmodic  and  Brief 366 

That  Turkey  will  be  Looking  Like  a  Big  Heathen  God 373 

Not  the  Sole  Constituents  of  the  Family 377 

Cats  Are  a  Part  of  the  Lares  and   Penates • 382 

The  Ideal  Household 399 

Banquet  of  Vitellius 407 

Look  at  the  Jewels.     Oh,  What  a  Glitter! 422 

From  One  Sick-bed  to  Another 425 

Inundation  of  the  Nile ._....  439 

Ascent  of  Mont  Blanc 441 

Dryburgh  Abbey  from  the  East 443 

Kenil worth  Castle 445 

The  Switzer  Trail,  Sierra  Madre  Mountains,  California 447 


i6 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE. 


More  Agreeable  if  We  could  Sit  down  at  Our  Fancy  Work 455 

The  Most  We  Can  Do  for  the  Poor  is  but  a  Debt  We  Owe 457 

Love  Is  a  Potent  Shield  against  Many  Troubles 479 

It  Is  not  Easy  to  Think  It  Is  not  as  Fine  as  It  Can  Be 481 

To  Go  to  Bed  Just  as  the  Lamps  are  Lighted 488 

Rolling  by  in  Her  Luxurious  Coach 490 


STEPPING  STONES  TO  HAPPINESS. 


CHAPTER    FIRST. 


One  Stepping   Stone— The   Use  of  the   Present. 

HOW  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living!  how  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses  forever  in  joy ! 

— Browning. 

Remember  that  man's  life  lies  all  within  this  present,  as  'twere  but  a  hair's  breadth  of 
time ;  as  for  the  rest,  the  past  is  gone,  the  future  yet  unseen. 

— Marcus  Aurelius. 

Now  is  the  accepted  time. 

—St.  Paul. 

Nothing  is  there  to  come,  and  nothing  past, 
Rut  an  eternal  now  does  always  last. 

— Cowley. 

Catch,  then,  oh  catch  the  transient  hour. 

—  Winter. 

Count  them  by  sensation   and  not  by  calendars,  and  each  moment  is  a  day 

— Disraeli. 

O  last  regret,  regret  can  die ! 

—  Tennyson. 


18 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


'V.  . 

THE    JOURNEY. 

On  a  Texas  Prairie. 

It  was  in  one  of  the  long  journeys  across  Texas  that  the  train  stop- 
ping at  a  water-tank  was  boarded  by  a  half-dozen  children  of  the  village 
that  had  grown  up  about  the  station,  children  to  whom  the  train  came 
like  a  herald  and  messenger  from  the  great  outside  world.  I  sat  at  the 
end  of  the  observation  car,  looking  out  over  the  wide  prairie  whose  ineffable 
green  under  an  immense  arch  of  dazzling  blue  sky  billowed  away  into 
the  low  horizon.  The  gentlemen  had  stepped  down  to  look  at  some  curiosity 
near  by,  and  being  mistress  of  the  occasion  I  allowed  the  children  the  liberty 
of  the  car,  which  they  enjoyed  to  the  utmost.  "I  thought  I  would  give  you 
fifty  dollars,  if  you  would  let  me  ride  in  this  car,"  said  one  adventurous  and 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  19 

bare-footed  little  damsel,  who  had  never 
seen  fifty  cents  in  the  world,  although  her 
father  was  rich  in  lands  and  herds. 

"Why  did  you  want  to  ride  in  this  car?" 
I  asked. 

.'Oh,  I  thought  it  would  be  such  happi- 
ness!" she  cried.  "But  I  reckon  I  would 
like  the  burro  best." 

Her  dream  of  happiness!  To  ride  in  the 
car.  And  mine  so  opposite — to  be  out  of  it. 
And  then  the  porter  came  in  his  august 
plenitude  of  power  and  shooed  the  children 
off,  and  the  gentlemen  returned  from  their 
call  upon  the  people  who  summered  and 
wintered  a  dozen  years  in  their  tent,  and 
we  presently  went  our  way  again. 

As  we  rolled  on  through  the  marvelous 
landscape,  its  great  dells  and  dingles  of 

live  oak,  its  streams  outlined  by  ribbons  of  white  lilies,  where  the  duck 
rose  and  skimmed  away,  its  blazes  of  scarlet  phlox,  its  coverts  where  the  deer 
started  at  our  coming,  and  its  stretches  where  the  wild  horses  galloped ;  there 
suddenly  rose  in  the  distance  the  vision  of  a  river  blue  as  blue  crystal, 
mirroring  trees  hung  with  long  wreaths  of  swaying  moss,  a  herd  of  cattle  com- 
ing down  to  drink  there,  and  behind  it  the  dim  but  gilded  domes  and  spires 
of  a  city  shone%,  the  whole  bathed  in  a  soft  atmosphere  like  that  light  which 
never  was  on  sea  or  shore. 


BELLS    RING    LOVE  S    STORY  SONG. 


A   Mirage. 

It  was  a  mirage  that  hung  there  before  us  for  a  little  while,  like  reality, 
and  then  as  we  would  have  approached,  it  vanished. 

"It  is  like  happiness,"  I  said  to  myself,  "the  little  girl's,  or  mine,  or  an- 
other's. It  is  always  before  us;  it  disappears  as  we  think  we  approach.  No 
rapture  is  so  sweet  as  its  anticipation  was.  Happiness  is  a  mirage."  And  an 
old  verse  came  to  mind :  For  here  we  have  no  abiding  city. 

Well,  then,  I  thought,  that  mirage,  at  any  rate,  represents  something  to 
which  we  wish  to  attain.  It  is  an  image  of  that  abiding  city  elsewhere; 
and  every  day  of  our  lives  there  are  stepping-stones  for  us  to  use  in  reach- 
ing it. 


20 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


AS     WE     ROLLED      ON      THROUGH 
THIS    MARVELOUS     LANDSCAPE. 


If  the  mirage  vanishes  as  we 
draw  near,  we  have  always  in 
the   present   the   measure    of 
happiness    that    comes    with 
brave  endurance;    in  the  fu- 
ture that  comes  with  expectancy ;  and  one  day  we  reach  the  great  goal.      Let 
us  be  content  then,  day  by  day,  with  the  stepping-stones. 


The   Present  Time. 

It  is  a  singular  thing  that  the  present  is  something  which  most  of  us  are 
always  scouting.  The  past  lies  in  an  inwrapping  mist  that  hides  all  pettiness, 
all  daily  annoyance,  and  leaves  only  the  salient  facts  of  pleasure  or  displeas- 
ure apparent,  and  has  about  it  in  our  fancy  some  of  the  sacred  character  with 
which  we  surround  the  dead.  The  future,  too,  wears  a  halo  rimmed  with  joy- 
ous expectancy,  and  is  a  Delectable  Land  gilded  in  a  sunlight  of  possibility. 
But  the  present — the  here  and  now — is  our  every-day  life,  is  dull  and 
commonplace,  and  worth  little.  What  we  might  have  done  in  the  past  we  re- 
gard with  a  certain  fondness ;  what  we  may  do  in  the  future,  with  eager  antici- 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  21 

pation ;  what  we  can  do  in  the  present,  with  doubt  and  disgust.  Never  do  to- 
day what  you  can  put  off  till  to-morrow,  is  a  reversal  of  the  ancient  maxim 
that  goes  to  the  heart  of  many  of  us.  We  are  too  apt  to  have  that  contempt 
for  to-day  which  we  have  for  all  familiar  things,  and  we  disregard  its 
opportunities,  just  as  we  think,  in  piping  times  of  peace,  that  we  could  have 
done  so  much  better  if  we  had  been  born  in  a  stirring  era;  or  in  war  times,  that 
we  "should  have  come  to  something"  if  we  had  had  the  opportunities  that  peace 
affords ;  just  as  we  think,  if  our  surname  is  a  common  one,  that  it  would  have 
been  very  different  with  us  if  we  had  been  born  Montmorencysor  Grosvenors; 
if  we  are  pcor,  that  with  wealth  we  could  have  sprung  upward  as  the  vaulter 
flies  with  the  upward  impulsion  of  the  spring-board ;  if  we  are  rich,  that  per- 
haps poverty  would  have  spurred  us  to  a  worthy  exertion. 

There  are  few  of  us  that  willingly  take  to-day  as  a  stepping-stone,  few  of 
us  who  think  cf  it  as  a  stepping-stone  at  all.  Yet  if  we  so  frequently  fail  to 
avail  ourselves  now  of  the  opportunities  of  the  moment,  when  to-morrow  is  to- 
day shall  we  regard  it  as  any  better  worth,  or  do  anymore  wisely  with  the  new 
possession?  And  yet  we  all  know  that  if  we  are  going  to  do  anything  with 
to-morrow  we  must  be  making  ready  to-day.  When  to-morrow  comes  rising 
over  us  it  may  be  as  full  of  opportunities  as  the  cloud  is  of  lightnings,  but  if 
we  have  not  our  kite  ready  to  fly,  we  shall  draw  none  of  those  lightnings  down. 

But  while,  on  the  one  hand,  this  disregard  and  waste  of  the  present  is  loss 
to  ourselves,  on  the  other  hand,  it  involves  a  peculiar  selfishness,  a  sort  of  psy- 
chological anomaly,  that  is  seldom  guessed  or  considered.  We  delay  the  dis- 
agreeable duty,  put  off  the  laborious  effort,  till  to-morrow,  for  what  reason? 
Because  to-morrow  is  another  country,  another  climate,  an  unknown  region, 
and  because  the  person  of  to-morrow  is  quite  another  person  from  the  person 
of  to-day — so  very  much  another  that  the  person  of  to-day  saves  himself  all 
the  difficulty  and  trouble  possible  by  pushing  it  over  to  the  person  of  to-mor- 
row. It  is  only  another  form  of  that  selfishness  which  we  exhibit  when  we  in- 
dulge ourselves  in  any  license,  in  any  pleasure  of  the  present,  for  which  we 
fcnow  to-morrow  will  bring  in  a  heavy  price  and  penalty  to  be  paid.  The  per- 
son of  to-day  is  to  have  the  license  and  the  pleasure,  the  person  of  to-morrow 
must  pay  the  penalty.  It  is  indeed  only  another  form  of  that  terrible  selfishness 
which  allows  the  parent  to  practice  a  self-indulgence  which  shall  some  day 
ruin  the  child,  who  does  not  inherit  any  share  of  the  pleasure  of  that  self-in- 
dulgence, but  only  the  ruin  of  its  penalty. 

But  the  selfishness  of  this  evasion  of  the  present  rises  into  more  metaphy- 
sical regions.  The  folly  of  it  is  something  that  even  the  simplest  thinker  can 
hardly  fail  to  see.  For  the  present  is  all  that  we  certainly  have,  and  to  let  it 
slip  by  unimproved  is  to  make  ourselves  so  much  the  poorer,  since  the  mo- 


vSTEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS 


HERD  OF  CATTLE  COMING  DOWN  TO  DRINK. 


merit  that  we  improve  is  ours  forever,  but  the  moment  that  we  do  not  seize, 
do  not  improve,  escapes  us,  has  nothing  to  do  with  us,  never  enriches  us, 
never  was,  indeed,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  and  our  life  is  by  that  much 
more  a  blank.  The  present  is  as  safe  as  time;  to-morrow  is  as  vague  as  eter- 
nity. Eternity  may  have  its  own  uses ;  we  know  nothing  about  them  ;  it  is 
among  infinite  things,  and  we  are  among  finite.  The  uses  of  time  we  know 
•well,  and  that  one  of  them  is  to  make  ourselves  round  and  complete  as  a  star 
for  our  course  through  that  infinity. 

"Ages  past  the  soul  existed ; 
Here  an  age  'tis  resting  merely, 
And  hence  fleets  again  for  ages." 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  23 

The   Uses  of  This  World. 

The  poet  Browning,  in  some  of  his  verses,  speaks  of  this  world  and  this 
life  as  something  that  sets  the  scene,  as  one  might  say,  of  this  particular  por- 
tion of  the  drama  of  our  soul's  existence;  and  that  act  incompletely  rendered, 
the  whole  drama  fails  of  perfection.  Suppose,  for  instance,  it  were  the  stage 
set  merely  for  the  love  scene  of  the  drama;  were  that  lost,  then  the  whole  thing 
would  want  point  and  meaning,  and  the  soul  be  by  that  much  the  more  barren. 

"Else  it  loses  what  it  lived  for, 
And  eternally  must  lose  it; 
Better  ends  may  be  in  prospect, 
Deeper  blisses,  if  you  choose  it. 
But  this  life's  end  and  this  love  bliss 
Have  been  lost  here." 

It  would  be  but  a  poor  and  material  supposition,  though,  to  conjecture 
that  the  world  were  only  the  resting-place  for  spirits  on  the  wing,  pausing  but 
long  enough  for  that  one  experience,  however  great,  however  beautiful,  it 
may  be.  To  the  young  it  might  possibly  seem  a  charming  fancy;  they  do  not 
give  the  world  for  love,  but  have  an  idea,  indeed,  that  the  world  was  given 
them  for  love,  and  in  that  view  they  certainly  cannot  be  accused  of  not  improv- 
ing the  present,  which  is  the  world.  But  love,  the  love  of  man  and  woman, 
is  merely  one  wondrous  phase  of  our  soul's  existence,  like  the  ray  that  sparkles 
in  the  brilliant  jet  of  some  special  color  as  the  crystal  takes  the  light.  Love 
of  another  kind,  the  love  of  fellow-men,  the  love  of  man  and  God,  is  the  very 
medium,  indeed,  that  surrounds  us  and  gives  us  communication,  atom  by 
atom,  with  the  universe,  that  will  accompany  us  forever,  it  is  to  be  hoped. 
And  there  are  far  other  purposes  apparent  in  life  than  the  wedding  of  twin 
souls.  For,  since  this  love  is  the  to-day  of  youth  and  the  yesterday  of  age,  it 
can  not  be  the  present  of  any  other  era,  and  one  era  deserves  as  much  of  fate  as 
the  other.  But  whatever  the  present  be,  whether  the  time  to  love  or  the  time  to 
hate,  the  time  to  weep  or  the  time  for  rejoicing,  it  is  only  those  that  live  in  it 
that  can  do  anything  with  it.  And  they  who  forget  all  its  claims,  and  live 
only  in  the  future,  live  only  to  and  for  the  future.  Even  those  who  make  a 
religious  point  of  it,  as  if  the  future  were  a  thing  any  dearer  to  the  Creator 
than  the  present,  are  quite  as  unwise  as  they  who  risk  everything  on  the  sea 
of  the  passing  moment.  "This  world  is  all  a  fleeting  show,"  says  the  one  side. 
"Let  us  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry,  for  to-morrow  we  die,."  says  the  other. 
And  the  one  side  forgets  that  God  lives  in  His  world,  and  that  it  is  not  theirs 
to  contemn  it  or  to  deride  a  portion  of  His  work,  and  the  other  side  forgets 
that  this  mortal  shall  put  on  immortality. 


24  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Of  a  truth  it  befits  us  to  make  the  most  of  the  present;  for  there  comes  at 
last  to  most  of  us  a  season  when  all  at  once  we  wake  to  the  fact  that  we  are  no 
longer  young,  and  something  angry  with  fate,  with  ourselves,  with  the  laws 
of  the  universe,  and  with  those  that  observe  them  in  relation  to  us,  we  experi- 
ence surprise  and  indignation,  as  if  we  were  the  only  ones  who  ever  grew  old. 


Advancing  Years. 

Any  trifle  will  scratch  the  match,  but  it  kindles  a  great  fire,  in  which  the 
dreams  and  hopes  of  youth  begin  to  dissipate  in  smoke  and  vapor.  Someone 
incidentally  speaks  of  us  as  "middle-aged,"  whereas  our  mothers  hardly  seem 
to  us  to  have  passed  that  meridian,  the  boundary  line  of  a  different  land  from 
youth ;  but  after  a  fair  debate  with  facts  and  the  looking-glass,  we  have  had  to 
yield  the  point. 

The  daughter  of  our  old  schoolmate,  married  on  or  about  her  graduation- 
day,  who  has  now  grown  up  and  come  before  us  to  replace  her  mother  in  some 
mysterious  way,  receives  our  embrace  as  a  "good  motherly  kiss, "  and  arouses 
us  to  the  circumstance  that  whatever  we  have  been  thinking  of  her  as  our  con- 
temporary, she  has  been  thinking  of  us  as  her  mother's  contemporary. 

We  have  never  given  the  subject  a  thought  before;  it  has  been  one  of  the 
things  taken  for  granted  with  us  that  of  course  we  are  young,  just  as  the  sky- 
is  blue  or  the  earth  round,  because  we  always  have  been  young — that,  in  truth, 
all  people  are  young  till  they  feel  old.  But  what  are  the  facts?  For  the  first 
time  we  consider  them.  As  far  as  years  go  to  make  up  the  count,  we  must  ad- 
mit that  we  have  crossed  the  median  line,  perhaps:  our  years  are  no  longer 
the  years  of  romance  and  poetry.  As  far  as  looks  go — well,  it  is  true  there  are 
silver  threads  among  the  gold ;  we  had  regarded  them  as  accidents,  but  they 
were  not  accidents — they  were  necessities ;  there  are  wrinkles  round  the  eyes, 
more  or  less,  which  have  no  longer  the  firm  young  muscle  to  hold  them  full; 
some  teeth  are  missing,  or  the  dazzle  of  the  enamel  is  gone;  there  is  the  sus- 
picion of  a  horrid  hollow  on  the  cheek;  under  the  best  conditions,  and  however 
attractive  the  face  may  remain,  the  rosy  roundness  there  is  gone.  So  far  as 
feelings  go — well,  it  has  seemed  to  us  till  now  only  as  if  life  deepened  and  en- 
riched itself  each  year.  Then  we  begin  to  look  about  us,  peradventure  to  see 
how  the  thing  strikes  the  rest  of  the  world.  We  have  spent  years  in  listening, 
in  learning,  in  making  ourselves  companionable  and  possibly  entertaining; 
we  see  the  veriest  chit,  with  her  luscious  flesh  and  color,  ignorant  of  life  and 
of  everything  else  but  her  own  senses,  preferred  before  us.  Ah!  then  other 
people  found  out  long  ago  what  has  just  been  revealed  to  us:  we  are  old,  and 
have  been  making  fools  of  ourselves  in  masquerading  as  young.  We  declare 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


25 


to  our  self-investigation,  then,  that  we  do  not  care  for  the  successes  of  the 
pretty  girl;  it  may  be  that  we  had  as  much  in  our  day,  we  do  not  find  it  in 
our  heart  to  envy  her;  perhaps  we  pity  her  that  the  beam  in  which  she  sports 
so  soon  must  fade.  Then  suddenly  we  see  that  we  are  pitying  the  young; 
truly  we  are  not  of  their  number!  And  if  we  had  no  sensation  of  the  sort  be- 
fore, henceforth  we  acknowledge  that  we  have  one  foot  in  the  grave.  Then, 
by  slow  access  of  meditation,  we  are  aware  that  much  of  the  freshness  of  feel- 
ing is  gone,  much  of  that  which  once  gave  us  rapture,  our  power  of  joyous  ap- 
preciation, our  fullness  of  enthusiasm ;  we  are  not  again  rapt  by  the  spell  of 
any  great  painting  into  fairy-land,  as  the  case  has  been  with  us,  when  all  the 
lovely  hues  and  aerial  distances  seemed  to  be  portions  of  the  region  to  which 
we  traveled,  that  region  into  which  the  coming  years  were  sure  to  bring  us; 
no  single  dash  of  color  in  the  sky  fills  us  with  unspeakable  delight  and  longing 
after  the  unknown;  we  do  not  lean  out  into  the  star-lit  nights  with  conscious 
companionship  of  the  spirits  of 
the  stars  and  the  deeps  and  the 
dark — we  are  a  little  afraid  of  the 
damps  and  draughts  and  rheum- 
atism ;  we  remember  all  these 
things;  we  do  not  feel  them  afresh. 
Nor  do  the  same  books  please  us, 


we  find,  that 
once  we  read 
and  re-read ; 
the  poems 
that  we  ruin- 
ed with  our 
pencil  marks 


26  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

and  underscoring  have  ceased  to  charm,  and  the  volumes  that  in  the  days  of 
those  pencil-marks  we  would  have  scorned,  now  attract  us  at  first  sight;  the 
bread-and-butter  novel  moves  us  to  derision;  we  feel  sufficient  acquaint- 
ance with  life  and  its  passions  and  subtle  motives  and  secret  springs  to  read  the 
books  of  darker  dealings.  Dancing  does  not  seem  to  us,  either,  the  pleasantest 
way  in  the  world  in  which  to  spend  time.  We  do  not  think  a  youth  of  twen- 
ty-one or  twenty-two  the  ideal  being  for  whom  the  heavens  and  earth  were  cre- 
ated. Possibly  we  prefer  lamp-light  and  people  to  all  the  moonlight  and  soli- 
tude in  the  world.  What  then?  It  seems  that  middle  age  has  its  pleasures, 
which  it  would  not  exchange  for  those  of  youth ;  why  will  we  persist  in  look- 
ing back  so  regretfully  on  those  of  youth,  which  we  would  no  longer  enjoy  if 
we  had  them  ? 


Looking  Backward. 

If  we  do  not  wish  to  dance,  why  do  we  envy  those  who  do?  If  a  dried 
date  does  not  taste  to  us  now  rich  with  all  spicy  flavors  of  unknown  lands,  but 
like  a  commonplace  sweetmeat,  compensation  comes  in  the  fact  that  we  have 
no  craving  for  the  date.  And  yet  it  seems  to  be  insufficient  compensation: 
we  wish  we  had  that  craving,  remembering  the  pleasure  of  its  satisfaction. 
We  are  not  like  the  old  proverb's  dog  in  the  manger,  that  neither  wants  a  thing 
himself  nor  is  willing  that  another  should  have  it;  on  the  contrary,  we  are 
much  more  like  the  little  boy  who  eats  his  cake  and  wants  it,  too.  Nothing 
would  .induce  us  to  forego  the  various  happinesses  of  the  period  to  which  we 
have  arrived,  the  calmness  and  repose,  the  clear-headed  comprehension  of 
vexed  problems,  the  wealth  of  memory,  the  power  of  looking  out  on  the  world 
and  not  only  seeing  as  in  youth,  but  of  summarizing  and  philosophizing  on 
what  we  see.  Yet,  for  all  that,  we  remember  how  round  was  the  cheek  of 
youth,  how  delicious  was  life  at  the  dawning;  and  here  is  the  shadow  of  the 
unknown  future  beginning  to  fall  over  us,  and  full  socn  shall  we  feel  the  breath 
of  the  dark  river;  and  we  see  fresh  meaning  in  the  words  of  the  old  preacher: 
"'Truly  the  light  is  sweet,  and  a  pleasant  thing  it  is  for  the  eyes  to  behold  the 
sun,  but  if  a  man  live  many  years  and  rejoice  in  them  all,  yet  let  him  remem- 
ber the  days  of  darkness,  for  they  shall  be  many.  "  As  the  monarch  considers 
a  demand  for  the  surrender  of  his  sceptre,  so  do  we  hate  to  lay  down  our  sover- 
eignty, to  retreat  as  the  new  generation  becomes  regnant,  to  become  not  only 
the  mere  commoners  and  superannuaries  of  the  present,  but  the  pensioners  of 
the  past,  to  feel,  perhaps,  a  passing  remembered  and  reflected  thrill  of  the 
keen,  quick  joy  at  the  fragrance  ot  a  wind,  at  bell  notes  on  the  evening  air,  at 


TRULY    WE    ARE   NOT    OF    THEIR    NUMBER. 


28 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


AT    MORNING    WE    USED    TO    FEEL    IT    WAS    GOING    TO    BE    MORNING    ALL    DAY. 


so  many  other  delightful  things  that  once  we  felt  in  full,  to  feel,  when  that 
wind  blows,  and  that  bell  rings,  and  that  love  story  is  sung,  and  that  evening 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  29 

air  grows  purple,  that  our  thrill  is  only  the  memory  of  the  thrills  of  years  and 
years  ago,  to  know  that  a  multitude  of  choicest  pleasures  now  are  no  more  the 
objects  of  actual  experience,  but  are  only  an  impalpable  procession  of  blood- 
less ghosts. 

But  for  all  that,  the  past  was  not  so  perfect  when  it  was  the  present  that 
we  need  to  compare  it  too  strenuously  with  to-day.  While  that  itself  was  the 
present  there  was  much  amiss  with  it.  It  is  true  that  when  we  were  very 
young  every  object  in  creation  seemed  gilded  with  the  glory  of  our  own 
dawn.  At  morning  we  used  to  feel  that  it  was  going  to  be  morning  all  day, 
with  blue  sky  and  sparkling  dew  and  flower  scents  and  freshness;  but  at  noon 
we  hardly  remembered  another  joy  than  those  under  the  meridian ;  and  our 
only  shadow  of  vexation  was  that  night  must  needs  come  to  put  an  end  to  it 
alL  But  when  we  ceased  to  be  very  young  how  sorry  we  sometimes  were  to 
open  our  eyes  and  find  it  morning !  How  glad  we  were  fain  to  be  when  night 
came  and  brought  another  day  to  its  close !  Fortunate  they  who,  in  middle 
life  and  in  still  more  advanced  years,  carry  the  morning  always  with  them, 
and  love  the  hour,  whatever  it  may  be,  and  the  fortune  it  brings  with  it. 

Yet,  sooth  to  say,  there  are  very  few  of  us  who  bring  our  ideals  up  to 
the  end  with  us  all  unbroken.  The  mists  of  early  day  magnify  the  objects  we 
see  through  them.  This  fruit  is  sweeter  to  the  virgin  palate  than  it  ever  will 
be  to  the  taste  accustomed  to  all  impressions ;  that  flower  scent  never  can  be 
found  again ;  that  music  on  the  water  never  sounds  to  us,  now  that  even-song 
has  sung,  as  it  did  when  blown  on  the  winds  of  morning.  When  Henry  Es- 
mond met  Father  Holt,  after  he  had  grown  to  be  a  man,  he  "smiled  to  think 
that  this  was  his  oracle  of  early  days,  only  now  no  longer  infallible  or  divine." 


Disenchantment. 

How  many  a  young  person  there  must  be  who,  dominated  over  by  a  ma- 
turer  mind  and  personality,  with  attractions  and  conjurations  of  its  own, 
shakes  off  the  spell  in  after-times,  and  sees  with  amazement  that  the  god,  if 
not  made  of  putty,  yet  is  only  common  flesh  and  blood !  How  many  a  woman 
has  waked,  after  years  of  marriage  with  the  one  idolized  at  the  outset,  to  find 
that  the  idol  had  feet  of  clay!  How  many  a  man  has  married  a  doll,  and  by 
the  slow  process  of  disenchanting  years  has  felt  no  surprise  when  at  last  he 
saw  the  sawdust  I  Yet  they  who  find  the  demi-god  of  youth  still  a  demi-god, 
when  middle  life  has  rubbed  the  cobwebs  out  of  their  eyes,  when  the  high 
noon  has  dissipated  those  magnifying  mists  of  morning,  they  who  preserve 
their  idols  and  find  them  and  their  informing  spirits  golden  still,  they  who 
have  no  occasion  to  be  reminded  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  sawdust  in  the 


THE  ILLUSION  THAT  SURROUNDS  THE  DEAD  WITH  A  HALO  IS  CERTAINLY 
(30)  A  BLESSED  ONE. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  3r 

world — how  blest  are  they,  blest  with  the  good  fortune  that  is  theirs,  blest 
even  if  it  is  illusion  and  they  themselves  are  not  wise  enough  to  be  aware  of  it  I 


Illusions. 

• 

For  surely  there  is  a  pleasure  in  our  illusions,  so  long  as  we  do  not  know 
them  to  be  illusions.  So  long,  indeed,  as  we  are  ignorant  of  that,  they  are  not 
illusions,  but  as  blessed  verities  as  any  of  the  fixed  truths  of  the  universe. 
To  believe  a  person  great  and  good  is  to  endow  him  with  all  the  great  and 
good  qualities  we  revere,  and  if  by  the  added  exaltation  which  we  might  de- 
rive from  him  if  he  really  exerted  those  qualities  upon  us,  it  does  not  actually 
matter,  for,  on  the  contrary,  by  insisting  upon  it  that  he  shall  have  the  noble 
characteristics,  they  have  to  be  created  somewhere,  and  if  only  in  our  imagin- 
ation, then  at  least  that  far  we  have  been  exalted  by  being  their  creators 
ourselves.  It  is  our  own  natures  that  have  been  the  matrices  of  the  statue  we 
have  reared  to  him,  and  he  is  none  the  worse  and  we  are  somewhat  the  better. 

The  illusion,  too,  that  surrounds  the  dead  with  a  halo  is  certainly  a  blessed 
one,  all  that  was  ignoble  or  unlovely  in  them  sinking  out  of  sight  and  memory 
and  only  the  beautiful  remaining,  till,  if  they  are  not  angels  in  the  unseen 
sphere  they  visit,  so  much  of  them  as  remains  in  our  memory  is  altogether 
angelic.  And  if  we  may  have  blessed  illusions  concerning  those  that  are  gone 
away  from  us,  how  equally  blessed  are  those  concerning  the  affairs  that  might 
have  come  to  us  but  never  do !  The  songs  we  never  sang  are  far  the  sweetest ; 
the  wife  who  was  never  wed,  the  hero  for  whom  the  maiden  waits,  the  little 
children  never  born  and  never  to  be  born — what  perfectness  enwrap  them 
all !  Elia's  Dream  Children  were  lovelier  and  sweeter,  and  dearer,  too,  than  any 
children  that  Charles  Lamb  ever  met.  It  is  a  thing  to  be  thankful  for  when 
any  experience  of  our  earlier  years  is  left  to  us  untouched  by  the  tarnishing 
fingers  of  time;  that  we  can  still  visit  the  house  that  used  to  seem  to  us  in  our 
childhood  the  House  Beautiful,  and  find  there  the  fair  chamber  looking  to 
the  east ;  that  the  young  girl  who  hardly  needed  wings  for  her  translation 
seems  as  ethereal  still ;  that  the  child  who  went  early  and  never  grew  up  to 
mundane  coarseness  is  still  to  us  a  cherub  out  of  heaven,  who  folded  his  wings 
awhile  ere  he  fled  back  to  heaven  again. 

And  perhaps  it  is  another  thing  to  be  quite  as  thankful  for,  the  illusions 
we  all  have  more  or  less  about  ourselves.  As  we  never  fairly  see  ourselves  in 
the  mirror,  the  right  side  there  becoming  the  left,  so  that  we  get  none  but  a 
false  and  distorted  vision  of  ourselves,  what  virtues,  what  triumphs  of  truth, 
kindness  and  generosity  do  we  not  seem  in  that  inner  vision  to  possess!  For 


STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


THE    HOME    OF    CHILDHOOD. 

would  we  not  make  such  and  such 
great  gifts,  and  perform  such  and 
such  magnanimous  acts,  if  things 
were  only  a  little  different  with  us? 

If  we  had  the  bank  account  of  that  billionaire,  would  we  not  be  paying  off  the 
national  debt?  As  it  is,  we  have  hardly  enough  for  ourselves.  And  what 
Ithuriels  we  are,  too,  in  that  inner  vision — we  who  scorn  all  untruth  except 
that  which  may  be  absolutely  necessary  to  save  ourselves  from  other  people's 
ill  opinion !  and  what  angels  of  mercy  are  we  in  that  picture  we  delight  to 
look  at — we  who  roll  the  last  scandal  under  our  tongue  for  a  choice  morsel, 
and  are  glad  when  what  we  have  is  better  than  what  our  neighbor  has!  Well, 
if  we  are  to  sit  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  for  our  sins,  our  bad  traits,  hereditary 
or  otherwise,  our  good  traits  uncultivated,  we  shall  have  a  sad  time  of  it;  and 
so  blessed  be  these,  with  all  the  other  of  our  illusions  that  hinder  us  ever  from 
seeing  a  grain  of  sawdust  in  any  doll  we  have.  For  if  a  sorrow's  crown  of  sorrow 
is  remembering  happier  things,  how  often  the  reverse  is  true,  and  how  we  find 
ourselves  forced  to  smile  at  the  very  affairs  that  seemed  unbearable  in  the 
bearing,  but  which  have  proved  to  be,  if  not  angels  in  disguise,  yet  things 
that  took  a  glory  on  their  flying  wings.  Last  year  how  bitter  and  detesta- 
ble was  that  experience!  This  year  the  conditions  are  changed;  the  situation 
is  otherwise;  it  seems  to  have  been  a  very  trifle  about  which  to  make  such  a 
fuss ;  we  laugh  at  ourselves  and  at  that  trouble  of  the  past. 

The  fact  is  that  a  person  must  be  of  a  very  sympathetic  cast  in  order  to 
feel  intensely  the  troubles  of  others;  it  is  not  quite  possible  to  realize  them; 
every  one  has  not  sufficient  self-forgetfulness  to  be  able  to  displace  himself, 
or  sufficient  imagination  to  plant  himself  on  another  centre  as  regards  the 


THE  CONTEMPTUOUS  STARE 


IN  A  PARIS  HAT. 


34 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


universe,  and  occupy  the  position  of  an- 
other party.  But  that  is  what  must  be 
done  if  one  would  feel  very  keenly  the 
pains  of  the  past,  for  to-day  you  are  your- 
self, but  yesterday,  as  it  has  been  said, 
you  were  quite  another  person;  the  ka- 
leidoscope has  taken  another  turn,  and  the 
relation  of  atoms  is  a  new  one. 


DRIPPING   THAT  WEARS  THE  STONE. 


Idle  Regrets. 

Last  year's  toothache  does  not  hurt  us; 
it  seems  as  though  it  hurt  some  one  else; 
in  truth  it  seems  as  if  that  tooth  might 
have  been  saved.  Last  year's  affront  makes 
us  smile  to  think  we  should  have  been  such 
fools  as  to  mind  it;  the  misery  we  endur- 
ed a  twelve-month  since,  in  our  old  bon- 
•  net,  from  the  contumelious  stare  of  some- 
body in  a  Paris  hat,  is  now,  in  the  distance,  too  infinitesimal  for  us  to  conde- 
scend to  remember.  But  then  it  is  quite  possible  that  we  have  a  new  hat  our- 
selves this  year,  that  nobody  is  affronting  us,  that  our  teeth  are  in  fine  order; 
we  should  not  dream  of  allowing  ourselves  to  be  unbalanced  by  such  trifles 
anyway  now — what  are  they  to  be  compared  to  the  sore  hangnail  of  the  pres- 
ent moment,  to  the  sudden  cracking  and  unexpected  shininessof  our  best  silk, 
to  the  bill  with  no  money  to  pay  it!  Yesterday's  troubles  vanish  in  the  per- 
spective of  two  narrowing  lines,  to-day's  hover  just  before  the  sight,  and  shut 
out  everything  else.  We  cannot,  to  be  sure,  forget  the  facts  of  the  past  trou- 
bles, but  all  their  sting  and  anguish  is  over  and  gone. 

Of  course  we  are  not  speaking  of  the  real  and  significant  griefs,  the  vital 
sorrows  of  the  past,  the  unavailing  regrets,  the  losses  never  to  be  made  good 
— events  whose  meaning  has  entered  into  our  being,  and  incorporated  itself 
with  our  soul.  Those  things  die  only  when  we  do,  and  will  not,  it  may  be, 
die  even  then,  for  their  discipline  may  have  been  the  thing  we  needed  most, 
and  nothing  that  is  really  valuable  and  necessary  for  us  can  ever  be  lost  out 
of  our  posssesion. 

In  "My  Summer  with  Dr  Singletary,"  Whittier  says:  "The  present  will 
live  hereafter,  memory  will  bridge  over  the  gulf  between  the  two  worlds,  for 
only  in  the  condition  of  their  intimate  union  can  we  preserve  our  identity  and 


EXIECTANCV  A  MUCH  MORE  EMPHATIC  THING  THAN  HOPE. 


36  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

personal  consciousness.  Blot  out  the  memory  of  this  world,  and  what  would 
heaven  or  hell  be  to  us?  Nothing  whatever.  Death  would  be  simple  anni- 
hilation ot  our  actual  selves  and  the  substitution  therefor  of  a  new  creation 
in  which  we  should  have  no  more  interest  than  in  an  inhabitant  of  Jupiter  or 
the  fixed  stars."  Still,  although  memory  may  thus  be  the  vital  current  of  our 
identity,  we  doubt  if  we  shall  carry  with  us  into  any  life  whatever,  memory  of 
the  little  teasing  details  of  our  annoyances,  although  their  effect  may  be  felt 
forever  in  countless  touches  on  cur  natures,  like  the  fret  of  that  ceaseless  drip- 
ping which  wears  a  stone.  It  is,  indeed,  only  the  exceptional  nature,  and  often 
the  morbid  one,  that  is  able  to  recall  pain,  that  is  saddened  by  its  recollection, 
but  we  can  all  of  us  thrill  again  with  the  recollection  of  old  joys;  and  the  op- 
timist might  well  argue,  from  experience  of  the  truth,  that  pain  is  perishable, 
but  ioy  is  immortal. 

Perhaps  if  we  recognized  this  more  forcibly,  the  petty  provocations,  the 
little  teasing  troubles,  that  are  so  "tolerable  and  not  to  be  endured"  while  we 
are  laboring  through  them,  would  cease  to  make  the  present  uncomfortable, 
would  wear  less  detestable  aspects  as  they  came,  would  no  longer  excite,  in 
the  rebellion  against  them,  our  ill  temper,  malice,  hatred,  and  all  uncharita- 
bleness,  and  would  make  less  final  impressions  upon  our  nature  than  even 
now  they  do;  we  might  refuse  to  be  provoked  or  teased  by  them,  and  remem- 
bering the  evanescence  of  pain  and  vexation,  and  the  permanency  of  joy,  we 
might  yet  learn  a  lesson  from  the  trees  of  the  forest  that  heal  their  wounds 
with  precious  gums;  from  the  oysters  that  mend  their  shells  with  pearls. 


Led  by  a  kindlier  hand  than  ours, 

We  journey  through  this  earthly  scene, 
And  should  not.  in  our  weary  hours. 

Turn  to  regret  what  might  have  been. 

And  yet  these  hearts,  when  torn  by  pain, 

Or  wrung  by  disappointment  keen 
Will  seek  relief  from  present  cares 

In  thought  of  joys  that  might  have  been. 

But  let  us  still  these  wishes  vain; 

We  know  not  that  of  which  we  dream  ; 
Our  lives  might  have  been  sadder  yet; 

God  only  knows  what  might  have  been. 

Forgive  us.  Lord,  our  little  faith. 

And  help  us  all.  from  morn   till  e'en. 
Still  to  believe  that  lot  the  best 

Which  is — not  that  which  might  have  been. 

—  G.  Z,  Gray. 


THE  BRIGHT  DRAPERY  OF  DREAMS  AND  PLEASANT  FANCIES.  (37) 


38  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


CHAPTER    SECOND. 


Dry   Shod. 

'Tis  expectation  makes  a  blessing  dear, 

Heaven  were  not  heaven  if  we  knew  what  it  were. 

— Sir  John  Suckling. 

If  a  flower 

Were  thrown  yon  out  of  heaven  at  intervals 
You'd  soon  attain  to  a  trick  of  looking  up. 

— Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning. 

In  all  the  splendor  farther  on 

We  missed  the  morning's  maiden  blush, 
The  soft  expectancy  was  gone, — 

The  brooding  haze,  the  trembling  flush. 

— Margaret  E.  Sangster. 

I  place  faith  in  three  friends — and  they  are  powerful  and  invincible   ones — namely, 
God,  and  your  head,  and  mine. — -Wolfgang  Amadeus  Mozart. 

For  every  minute  is  expectancy 
Of  rhore'arrivance. 

— Shakespeare. 

Hope  to  joy  is  little  less  in  joy  than  hope  enjoyed. 

— Shakespeare. 

But  although  the  art  of  living  chiefly  in  the  present,  and  of  letting  the  dead 
past  bury  its  dead,  gives  us  two  of  the  stepping-stones  to  happiness,  still, 
would  we  go  over  dry-shod,  the  next  one  must  not  be  overlooked.  It  is  the 
joy  of  perpetual  hope. 

Perpetual  Hope. 

For  there  are  few  joys  of  life  comparable  with  that  of  expectancy,  espe- 
v;cially  the  expectancy  of  people  of  imagination.  This  is  a  singular  fact,  and 
speaks  largely  for  the  spiritual  side  of  our  nature;  for  few  of  the  joys  of  real- 
ization and  possession  ever  quite  reach  the  heights  of  hope  and  imagination. 
Expectancy  is,  however,  a  much  more  emphatic  thing  than  hope,  since  it  sig- 
nifies certainty,  where  the  other  is  uncertain — signifies  assurance  and  right, 


NEVER  BIRDS  SANG  AS  I  HEARD  THEM. 


(39) 


40  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

signifies  hope  with  the  seal  of  authority  upon  it.  We  hope  for  many  things 
without  a  shadow  of  ground  for  our  hoping;  we  only  expect  that  which  we 
feel  is  sure  to  come.  And  what  a  pleasure  is  there  in  the  expectancy,  calling 
upon  senses  that  know  no  sating!  As  the  world  within  the  looking-glass  is 
an  ideal  world;  as  the  scene  in  the  Claude  Lorraine  glass  is  transfigured;  as 
any  commonplace  thing,  when  reflected  out  of  the  actual  and  tangible,  takes 
on  an  aura  of  grace  and  refinement — so  expectancy  gives  us  sensations  just 
beyond  reality,  refines  the  real  and  idealizes  facts. 


An  Ideal  World. 

One  living  in  a  state  of  expectancy,  however  temporary,  lives  really  in  an 
ideal  world  while  it  lasts.  Every  thing  that  comes  within  it  is  taken  out  of 
bald  facts,  and  clothed  in  the  bright  drapery  of  dreams  and  pleasant  fancies. 
Exactly  what  is  expected  never  comes,  to  be  sure,  and  unconsciously  in 
these  seasons  of  expectancy  all  of  us  are  more  or  less  poets.  The  maiden 
who  wonders  if  her  lover's  steed  "keeps  pace  with  her  expectancy  and  flies," 
is  looking  for  a  lover  many  degrees  finer  and  tenderer  than  the  lover  who  at 
last  arrives,  and  divides  the  enjoyment  of  his  love-making  with  the  enjoyment 
of  his  cigar.  The  wife  who  awaits  her  husband,  her  heart  beating  at  every 
sound,  "listening  less  to  her  own  music  than  for  footsteps  on  the  walk,"  pic- 
tures to  herself,  although  perhaps  without  an  articulate  thought  about  it,  a  sort 
of  model  King  Arthur,  a  noble  pattern  of  all  the  excellencies,  and  in  her  love 
of  this  superior  being  of  her  conjuration  forgets  all  about  the  real  man,  who, 
when  he  comes,  will  complain  if  his  slippers  have  not  been  warmed,  if  his 
supper  is  not  to  his  mind,  who  wants  his  wife  well  dressed  on  nothing  a  year, 
wants  his  table  well  set,  but  grumbles  over  the  bills,  and  in  general  plays  the 
part  of  that  Pharaoh  who  would  have  bricks  made  without  straw.  And  in 
turn,  the  husband  whose  wife  has  been  absent,  and  who  has  missed  her  order- 
ing, her  bustling,  her  fault-finding,  her  presence  in  the  house,  so  long  that  he 
has  had  time  to  forget  the  disagreeable  part  of  her  and  remember  only  the 
cheerful  and  sweet,  strangely  recalls,  now  that  he  awaits  her  return,  the  wife 
of  his  youth,  the  girl  he  fell  in  love  with,  and  who  seemed  to  him  at  that  time 
far  "too  good  for  human  nature's  daily  food,"  and  is  somehow  so  fondly  ex- 
pecting that  seraphic  being,  that  he  experiences  an  actual  shock  of  surprise 
over  the  arrival  of  the  woman  who  does  come  at  last,  only  to  dispute  the  hack- 
man's  charge,  to  reproach  the  servants,  to  complain  of  the  misdoings  during 
her  interregnum,  to  set  things  straight  with  fury,  and  to  tease  for  money. 
The  merest  trifle,  in  short,  when  we  expect  it  and  it  has  not  yet  arrived, 


IN  THE  WAVE- WASHED  SAND. 


THE  SHIP  THAT  IS  COMING  INTO  HARBOR. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  43 

seems  something  better  than  the  truth.  Even  the  bonnet  on  its  way  from  the 
milliner's  is  changed  in  our  waiting  from  a  tolerably  pretty  affair  into  a  be- 
witching and  delicate  confusion  of  straw  and  lace  and  ribbons  and  flowers, 
that  with  some  throws  a  glamor  of  itself  over  the  commoner  bonnet  when 
that  arrives,  and  with  others  utterly  annihilates  the  poor  bonnet  that  falls  un- 
der rione  of  its  provisions.  And  so  of  every  other  mote  in  the  world — it  is 
gold  while  it  swims  in  the  sun ;  it  is  dust  when  it  falls  on  our  arm. 

The  pleasures'of  this  expectancy  are  something  that  you  may  see  little 
children  begin  to  indulge  in  early.  Half  of  their  plays  are  made  of  it,  and 
this,  that,1  and  the  other  joy  and  glory  are  to  be  theirs  when  they  are  big  boys 
and  girls-;  'when  they  grow  up ;  when  they  take  off  petticoats,  forswear  knick- 
erbockers, 'wear  long  dresses,  have  a  tall  hat ;  when  they  are  ladies ;  when  they 
are  soldiers;  when  they  go  to  college;  when  they  have  children  of  their  own; 
when  the  great  future  arrives,  with  all  that  they  expect  in  it.  Who  of  us, 
even  in  middle  life,  is  not  expecting  his  ship  to  come  in?  And  who  of  us 
cannot  recall  the  magnificent  expectancy  concerning  that  vague  realm  of  un  - 
known  labors  and  rewards  which  we  used  to  call  the  great  world,  and  to  think 
of  as  a  delightful  region  into  which  we  should  presently  be  launched,  which 
lay  always  just  below  the  horizon  ?  And  what  would  life  be  worth  if  that 
other  world  were  cut  off  from  it — that  world  lying  just  beyond  the  horizon 
of  life,  which  somehow  casts  its  glory  back  over  this  actual  world  of  to-day, 
and  serves  in  our  expectancy  as  perpetual  compensation  for  all  the  ills  and 
wrongs  existing  here? 

Everybody  remembers  that  child  experience  of  Mrs.  Browning,  when  in 
her  sylvan  rambles  she  came  across  a  spot  that  never  seemed  the  same  again, 
if  again  she  ever  found  it : 

I  affirm  that  since  I  lost  it, 

Never  bower  has  seemed  so  fair; 
Never  garden  creeper  crossed  it 

With  so  deft  and  brave  an  air; 
Never  bird  sang  in  the  summer 

As  I  saw  and  heard  them  there. 


A  Child's  Discovery. 

We  recollect,  ourselves,  a  child  of  our  acquaintance  who,  playing  on  the 
beach  at  Newcastle,  discovered  a  deposit  of  garnets  there  in  the  wave-washed 
sand,  and  ran  hallooing  up  the  shore  for  spades  and  bags  to  carry  off  the 
treasure,  and  whose  dismay  was  only  surpassed  by  that  of  the  fox  whose 
buried  goose  had  been  unearthed  and  stolen  by  another  fox,  when,  on  her 


44 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


IF    IT    HAD    BEEN    THE    QUEEN    A-COMING    IN. 

returning  full  of  expectancy,  with  a  quickly  assembled  party,  there  was  not  a 
garnet  to  be  found ;  and  she  would  have  been  deemed  guilty  of  falsehood  or 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  45 

of  fancy  if  her  little  apron  full  of  rough  gems  had  not  been  witness  to  her 
veracity,  and  Hugh  Miller  had  not  afterward  come  to  her  support  with  rela- 
tion of  similar  facts.  So  far  from  quenching  the  spirit  of  expectancy  within 
her,  the  circumstance  seemed  to  stimulate  it  during  all  the  rest  of  her  life,  as 
if  time  and  fate  must  needs  atone  for  the  loss  by  giving  everything  else  she 
looked  for  a  value  beyond  itself. 

Many  of  our  mental  processes  are  as  yet  quite  inscrutable  and  past  finding 
out,  and  thus  it  would  be  of  little  use  to  endeavor  to  say  why  expectancy  so 
doubles  the  value  of  consummation. 


Surprise. 

There  is  a  sudden  joy  and  ecstatic  heart-beat  in  the  very  welcome  surprise 
that  sometimes  overtakes  us,  but  who  would  exchange  it  for  the  long-drawn- 
out  sweetness  of  that  expectation  in  which  we  count  the  days,  the  hours,  the 
moments,  picture  to  ourselves  the  truth,  gloat  over  every  item  of  the  coming 
joy,  live  it  and  re-live  it,  and  extract  the  last  drop  of  its  deliciousness  before 
it  is  actually  here?  The  surprise  is  precious,  doubtless;  it  lasts  a  moment. 
The  expectation  is  equally  precious-,  it  lasts  for  hours.  Our  heart  goes  out 
and  flies  before  the  ship  that  is  coming  into  harbor,  goes  out  to  greet  the  guest, 
goes  out  to  receive  the  blessing,  and  is  doubly  dowered  with  every  reasonable 
day's  delay.  To  expect  sorrow,  and  supreme  sorrow,  surely  to  expect  it,  is  as 
wearing  and  wearying  and  unendurable  as  the  suffering  is  when  the  blow  falls; 
to  expect  joy,  and  surely  to  expect  it,  is  to  enjoy  it  by  so  much  the  longer  and 
by  so  much  the  more  exquisitely  as  it  may  happen  with  us  that  the  ideal  in 
our  being  exceeds  the  real.  Thus  it  may  be  seen  that  happy  expectation,  al- 
most another  name  tor  content,  is  an  important  factor  in  our  happiness.  I 
suppose  it  was  a  lesson  of  content  in  the  present  and  of  joy  in  the  future,  of 
the  delight  of  vague  expectancy  and  constant  hope,  that  Mrs  Mulgrave  had 
when  looking  at  her  new  house  in  process  of  construction,  she  saw  what  she 
described  as  "Two  Sides  to  a  Bureau." 


Mrs.  Mulgrave's  Story. 

It  is  Mrs.  Jim,  however,  who  speaks  first.  This  is  one  side  of  it:  You 
must  know,  she  said,  that  when  I  turned  round  and  she  was  coming  in  the 
door.  I'm  sure  I  thought  I  was  dreaming.  If  it  had  been  the  Queen  a-com- 
ing  in,  I  shouldn't  have  been  more  surprised;  and  the  three  children  with 


vSTEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


their  three  faces  like  little  pigs!  "Here,  you,"  whispered  I  to  Benjamin 
Franklin,  "you  just  go  'long  and  stick  your  face  in  some  water,  quick  metre! 
And  give  Johnny's  a  scrubbing,  too."  And  I  wet  the  corner  of  my  apron  be- 
tween my  lips  in  a  hurry,  and  rubbed  Sue's  mouth;  and  then  I  made  believe 
I  hadn't  seen  her  before  and  dusted  the  other  chair  for  her;  and  she  sat  down, 
and  I  sat  down,  and  we  looked  at  one  another.  Lord!  she  was  that  fine!  Her 
flounces  were  silk,  and  they  were  scalloped  like  so  many  roses,  and  lace  show- 
ing under  the  edges  of  them ;  and  she  had  such  boots,  setting  like  gloves — just 
enough  to  make  your  eyes  water.  But  the  flowers  in  her  hat — you  should  have 
seen  them — I  declare  you  could  have  smelled  them !  Well,  she  seemed  to  fill 
up  the  little  room,  and  if  ever  I  was  glad  of  anything,  I  was  glad  that  I'd 
scrubbed  the  fleer  that  very  day,  so  that  it  was  clean  enough  to  eat  off  of— 
glad,  too,  that  I'd  taken  Jim's  old  hat  out  of  the  broken  window  and  put  in 
the  smooth  bottom  of  a  box  with  a  good  respectable-looking  tack.  Jim  might 
have  mended  that  window,  for  he's  a  perfect  Jack-at-all  trades;  but  he'd 
rather  play  the  fiddle  than  eat,  and  he  was  a-playing  it  out  in  the  tie-up  that 
moment,  with  all  the  wind  there  was  blowing.  However,  I  couldn't  complain, 
for  he'd  just  mended  the  chair,  so  that  it  was  almost  as  good  as  new,  and  had 
put  me  up  as  tidy  a  shelf  as  you  please  over  the  stove  for  the  brush  and  comb 
and  the  hair-oil  bottle.  If  I'd  been  a  little  slicked  up  myself,  with  my  new 
print  and  my  pink  apron,  cr  if  I'd  only  had  my  bang  on,  I  wouldn't  a-minded. 

But    when    Benjamin    Franklin   came   back 

with  just  the  top  dirt  rinsed  off,  and  the  rest 

all  smears,  I  did  feel  so  vexed  that  I  gave 

him  as  good  a  shaking  as  a  nut-tree  gets  in 

harvest. 

' '  Bless  my  heart ! ' '  says  she,  ' '  what  are  you 

doing  that  for  ?" 

"Because  he's  so   aggravating,"    says  I. 

"There,   you  go   'long;  '  and   I  gave  him  a 

shove. 

"Why,"  says  she,  "don't  you  remember 

how  it  used  to  feel  to  be  shaken  yourself?" 
"1  don't  know  as  I  do,"  says  I. 
"As  if  you  were  flying  to  atoms?     And 

your  body  was  as  powerless  as  if  it  had  been 
Lin  the  hands  of  a  giant,  and  your  heart  as 
(full  of  hate?  ' 

"Why,  look  a-here,"  says  I.       'Be  you  a 
YOU  COULDN'T  SHUT  A  DRAWER,     missionary?" 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


47 


THAT  SEA  VIEW    WOULD  BE  GOOD  AS  A   PICTURE 

"A  missionary?"  says  she,  laughing  'No.  I  m  Mr.  Mulgrave's  wife. 
And  I  came  up  to  see  how  the  new  house  was  getting  on ;  but  the  house  is  so 
full  of  plaster  dust  inside  and  the  whirlwind  is  blowing  the  things  off  the 
roof  so  outside,  that  I  thought  I  would  venture  in  here  till  the  cloud  passed," 

"Oh,"  says  I. 

"J  knocked,  but  you  didn't  hear  me." 


48  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

"I'm  real  glad  to  see  you,"  says  I.  "It's  a  dreadful  lonesome  place,  and 
hardly  anybody  ever  comes.  Only  I'm  sorry  everything's  so  at  sixes  and 
sevens.  You  see,  where  there's  a  family  of  children,  and  the  wind  blowing 
so,"  says  I,  with  a  lucky  thought — it's  always  good  to  have  the  wind  or  the 
weather  to  lay  things  to,  because  nobody's  responsible  .for  the  elements — 
"things  will  get  to  looking  like  ride-out." 

"Children  do  make  confusion,"  says  she;  "but  confusion  is  pleasanter 
with  them  than  pimlico  order  without  them." 

"Well,  that's  so,"  I  answered;  "for  I  remember  when  Johnny  had  the 
measles  last  year  I  thought  if  he  only  got  well  I'd  let  him  whittle  the  door  all 
to  pieces  if  ever  he  wanted  to  again.  Here,  Benny,"  says  I,  for  I  began  to 
feel  bad  to  think  I'd  treated  him  so — if  he'd  mortified  me,  'twas  no  reason 
why  I  should  mortify  him,  and  right  before  folks  so — "take  that  to  little  sis- 
ter," and  I  gave  them  something  to  keep  them  quiet.  "I  suppose  you 
wouldn't  care  for  any  water?''  says  I  to  her  then.  "Not  if  I  put  some  mo- 
lasses in  it?  I  didn't  know  but  the  wind  would  have  made  you  dry.  Yes, 
children  do  make  trouble.  One  of  Jim's  songs  says, 

'  Marriage  does  bring  trouble ; 

A  single  life  is  best; 
They  should  never  double 

Who  would  be  at  rest.' 

But  there!  I  wouldn't  be  without  them  for  all  the  fine  clothes  I  used  to  have 
when  I  was  single  and  worked  in  the  shop  I  worked  down  at  Burrage's — 
I  suppose  you  never  buy  shoes  there  any' 

"What  makes  you  suppose  so?"  says  she,  smiling. 

"Well,  because  your  boots  don't  look  like  our  work;  they  look  like — like 
Cinderella's  slippers.  Yes,  I  worked  at  Burrage's,  off  and  on,  a  good  many 
years — on  most  of  the  time.  I  had  six  dollars  a  week.  Folks  used  to  wonder 
how  I  got  so  many  clothes  with  it,  after  I'd  paid  my  board.  But  I  always 
had  that  six  dollars  laid  out  long  before  pay-day — in  my  mind,  you  know — so 
that  I  spent  it  to  the  best  advantage.  There's  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  in  that.  " 

"A  great  deal,"  says  she. 

"That's  what  I  say  to  Jim ;  and  then  he  says  his  is  all  spent  before  pay- 
day, too — but  with  a  difference,  you  know.  I  suppose  you've  got  a  real  good, 
steady  husband?" 

"Oh,  yes,  indeed,'*  says  she,  laughing  some  more. 

"You  must,  to  have  such  a  nice  house  as  that  is  going  to  be.  But  there! 
I  shouldn't  know  what  to  do  with  it,  and  I  don't  envy  you  a  bit/' 

'Oh,  you  needn't,"  says  she,  a-twitching  her  shoulder;  "I  expect  to  have 
trouble  enough  with  it.'' 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS 


49 


I  WAS  THE  MOST  UNHAPPY  WOMAN. 

"Not,"  says  I — "I  don't  mean  that  Jim  isn't  steady.     He's  as  steady  as 
a  clock — at  that  old  fiddle  of  his.      But  sometimes   I   do  wish  he  loved  his 
regular  trade  as  well,  or  else  that  that  was  his  trade.     But  I  suppose  if  fiddling 
was  his  trade,  he'd  want  to  be  wood  carving  all  the  time." 
"Why  don't  you  speak  to  him, "  says  she,  "seriously?" 
"Well,   you    can't,"    says   I.       "He's   so   sweet   and   good-natured    and 
pleasant   that   when  I've  got  my  mind    all  made  up    to  give  him  a  sound 
talking    to,    he    makes    me    like    him    so  and   sets    me    to    laughing   and 


5o  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

plays  such  a  twirling,  twittering  tune,  that  I  can't  do  it  to  save  my 
life." 

You  see,  I'd  got  to  talking  rather  free  with  her,  because  she  listened  so, 
and  seemed  interested,  and  kept  looking  at  me  in  a  wondering  way,  and  at 
last  took  Sue  up  on  her  lap  and  gave  her  her  rings  to  play  with.  Such  rings! 
My  gracious!  one  of  them  flashed  with  stones  all  round,  just  like  the  Milky 
Way.  I  should  think  it  would  have  shone  through  her  glove. 

"But,"  says  she,  "you  should  tell  him  that  his  children  will  be  growing 
up  presently,  and"- 

"Oh,  I  do  that,"  says  I.  "And  he  says,  well,  he'll  do  for  the  bad  exam- 
ple they're  to  take  warning  by;  and,  at  any  rate,  it's  no  use  worrying  before 
the  time  comes,  and  when  they  do  grow  up  they  can  take  care  of  themselves 
just  the  way  we  do. " 

"And  are  you  contented  to  leave  it  so?"  says  she. 

"Well,  I'm  contented  enough.  That  is,  in  general.  But  I  do  wish  some- 
times that  Jim  would  go  down  to  his  work  regular  every  day,  with  his  tin 
pail  in  his  hand,  like  other  men,  and  come  back  at  night,  and  have  a  good 
round  sum  of  money  in  hand  at  once,  instead  of  just  working  long  enough  to 
get  some  flour  and  fish  and  pork  and  potatoes  and  sugar,  and  then  not  so 
much  as  lifting  his  finger  again  till  that  all  gives  out;  it's  such  a  hand-to- 
mouth  way  of  living,"  says  I.  "And  of  course  we  can't  get  things  together, 
such  as  a  rocking-chair,  and  a  sofa,  and  a  good-sized  looking-glass,  and  an 
eight-day  clock.  Not  that  I  care  much;  only  when  a  lady  like  you  happens  in 
I'd  like  to  give  her  a  seat  that's  softer.  And  there's  a  bureau.  Now  you 
wouldn't  believe  it,  but  I've  never  owned  a  bureau. " 

"Indeed,"  says  she. 

"Yes.  I  don't  think  it's  good  manners  to  be  always  apologizing  about 
the  looks  of  a  place;  and  so  I  don't  say  anything  about  all  the  boxes  and 
bundles  I  have  to  keep  my  things  in,  that  do  give  a  littery  look;  but  I  am 
always  meaning  to  have  a  bureau  to  put  them  in,  if  I  can  compass  it  ever. 
You  see,  it's  hard  getting  so  much  money  in  a  pile;  and  if  I  do  happen  to, 
why  then  there's  something  I  must  have,  like  Jim's  boots,  or  flannel  and 
yarn  and  cloth,  or  a  little  bed — because  you  can't  sleep  with  more  than  two 
children  in  one  bed.  And  so,  somehow,  I  never  get  the  bureau.  But  then  I 
don't  give  it  up.  Oh,  I  suppose  you  think  my  notions  are  dreadful  extrava- 
gant," says  I,  for  she  was  looking  at  me  perfectly  amazed;  really,  just  as  if  I 
was  a  little  monster,  and  she'd  never  seen  the  like.  "And  perhaps  they  are. 
But  people  must  have  something  to  ambition  them,  and  it  seems  to  me  as 
though,  if  I  ever  could  get  a  bureau,  I  should  'most  feel  as  if  I'd  got  a  house!" 

"Well,  I  declare!"  says  she,  drawing  of  a  long  breath. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  51 

"I  did  come  precious  near  it  last  fall,"  says  I — for  I  wanted  her  to  see 
that  it  wasn't  altogether  an  impossibility,  and  I  wasn't  wasting  my  time  in 
vapors — "when  Jim  was  at  work  up  here,  helping  lay  out  the  garden.  He 
was  paid  by  the  day,  you  know;  Mr.  Mulgrave  paid  him;  and  he  was  paid 
here,  and  I  had  the  handling  of  the  money;  and  I  said  to  myself, 'Now  or 
never  for  that  bureau!'  But,  dear  me,  I  had  to  turn  that  money  over  so  many 
times  to  get  the  things  I  couldn't  do  without  any  way  at  all,  that  before  I  got 
round  to  the  bureau  it  was  every  cent  gone!" 

Yes,"  she  says,  "it's  apt  to  be  so.  I  know  if  I  don't  get  the  expensive 
thing  when  I  have  the  money  in  my  purse,  the  money  is  frittered  away  and 
I've  nothing  to  show  for  it." 

"That's  just  the  wayit  is  with  me,"  says  I.  "But  somehow  I  can't  seem 
to  do  without  the  shoes  and  flannel,  and  all  that.  Oh,  here's  your  husband! 
That's  a  powerful  horse  of  his.  But  I  should  be  afraid  he'd  break  my  neck  if 
I  was  behind  him." 

"Not  when  my  husband's  driving,"  says  she.  And  she  bids  me  good- 
day,  and  kisses  Sue,  and  springs  into  the  wagon,  and  is  off  like  a  bird,  with 
her  veil  and  her  feathers  and  her  ribbons  and  streamers  all  flying. 

Well,  so  far  so  good.  Thinks  I  to  myself :  "She'll  be  a  very  pleasant  neigh- 
bor. If  she's  ever  so  fine,  she  don't  put  on  airs.  And  it  does  you  good  once 
in  a  while  to  have  somebody  listen  when  you  want  to  run  on  about  yourself. 
And  maybe  she'll  have  odd  chores  that  I  can  turn  my  hand  to — plain  sewing, 
or  clear-starching,  or  an  extra  help  when  company  comes  in.  I  shouldn't 
wonder  if  we  were  quite  a  mutual  advantage."  And  so  I  told  Jim,  and  he 
said  he  shouldn't  wonder,  too. 

Well,  that  evening,  just  at  sunset — now  I'm  telling  you  the  real  truth 
and  if  you  don't  believe  me,  there  it  is  to  speak  for  itself — Jim  was  a-playing 
"Roslin  Castle,"  and  I  was  a-putting  Sue  to  sleep,  when  I  happened  to  lookout 
the  window,  and  there  was  a  job  wagon  coming  straight  up  the  hill,  with 
something  in  it  that  had  a  great  canvas  hanging  over  it.  "It's  a  queer  time 
o'  day,"  says  I  to  myself,  "to  be  bringing  furniture  into  Mr.  Mulgrave 's house, 
and  it  not  half  done,  either.  But  it  s  none  of  my  business.  Maybe  it's  a 
refrigerator  to  be  set  in  the  cellar. ' '  And  I  went  on  patting  Sue,  when  all  at 
once  Jim's  fiddle  stopped  short,  as  if  it  broke,  and  I  heard  a  gruff  voice  say- 
ing, "Where'll  you  have  it?  Here,  you,  sir,  lend  a  hand. "  And  I  dropped 
Sue  on  the  bed  and  ran  to  the  door,  and  they  were  a-bringing  it  in — there, 
look  at  it,  as  pretty  a  bureau  as  you'll  find  in  a  day's  walk.  It's  pine,  to  be 
sure,  but  it's  seasoned,  and  every  drawer  shuts  smooth  and  easy;  and  it's 
painted  and  grained,  like  black-walnut,  and  there's  four  deep  drawers,  and  a 
shallow  one  at  the  bottom,  and  two  little  drawers  at  the  top ;  and  in  the  upper 


52  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

drawer  of  the  deep  ones  there's  a  place  for  this  all  parted  off,  and  a  place  for 
that,  and  a  place  for  the  other;  and,  to  crown  the  whole,  a  great  swinging 
glass  that  you  can  see  yourself  in  from  head'to  belt.  Just  look'  Oh,  I  tell 
you  it's  a  great  thing.  "With  Mrs.  Mulgrave's  compliments,"  says  the  man, 
and  went  off  and  shut  the  door. 

I  never  waited  for  anything.  Sue  was  screaming  on  the  bed  ;  I  let  her 
scream.  I  never  minded  Benny's  rassling  nor  Jim's  laughing.  I  got  down 
every  bandbox  and  basket  and  bundle  I  had  on  the  shelves,  got  out  every  bag 
there  was  under  the  bed  and  behind  the  doors,  and  in  ten  minutes  that  bureau 
was  so  full  you  couldn't  shut  a  drawer.  Then  I  took  them  all  out  and  fixed 
them  all  over  again.  "It's  ours,  Jim!  "says  I;  and  then  I  just  sat  down 
and  cried. 


The   Other   Side   of  the   Bureau. 

"Well,  Lawrence,  I'm  so  glad  you've  come!  I  thought  you  never  would. 
And  I've  had  such  a  lesson  read  me!" 

"Lesson?  Who's  been  reading  my  wife  a  lesson,  I  should  like  to  know?" 
"Who  do  you  think  ?  Nobody  but  that  little  absurd  woman  there — that  Mrs, 
Jim.  But  I  never  had  such  a  lesson.  Drive  slow,  please,  and  let  me  tell  you 
all  about  it — this  horse  does  throw  the  gravel  in  your  face  so!  I'm  expecting 
every  moment  to  see  the  spokes  fly  out  of  the  wheels  There,  now,  that's 
reasonable.  This  horse  is  a  perfect  griffin — has  legs  and  wings,  too." 

"Well — steady,  Frolic,  steady' — now  let's  have  your  lesson.  If  there's 
any  one  can  read  you  a  lesson,  Mrs.  Fanny  Mulgrave,  I  should  like  to  hear  it" 

"Now,  Lawrence!  However,  you  know  I  came  up  to  look  at  the  house, 
for  I've  been  having  my  misgivings  about  that  big  room.  And  when  I  went 
in,  it  did  look  so  big  and  bare!  I  was  dismayed.  I  paced  it  off  this  way  and 
paced  it  off  that  way,  and  thought  about  what  I  could  put  in  the  corners',  and 
how  that  window  with  the  sea  view  would  be  as  good  as  a  picture;  and  how 
the  whole  mantel-piece  from  dado  to  cornice,  with  its  white  marble  carvings 
and  gildings  and  mirror,  was  a  perfect  illumination;  and  how  1  must  con- 
front it  in  that  great  square  alcove  with  a  mass  of  shadow ;  and  we  haven' t  a  sin- 
gle thing  to  go  there; and  how  magnificent  an  ebony  and  gold  cabinet  like  that 
Mrs.  Watrous  and  I  saw  at  the  Exhibition — the  one  1  went  into  ecstasies 
over,  you  know,  that  goes  from  floor  to  ceiling — would  fill  the  place.  And  the 
more  I  thought  cf  it,  the  more  indispensable  such  a  great  ebony  and  gilt  cabi- 
net seemed  to  be.  And  I  knew  it  was  perfectly  impossible" - 

"How  did  you  know  it,  may  1  inquire?" 


DWELLING  UPON  THE  SPIRITUAL. 


54  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

"Oh,  they  cost — oh,  hundreds  of  dollars.  And,  of  course  the  house  itself 
takes  all  you  can  spare.  But  I  felt  that  it  would  be  utterly  out  of  my  power 
to  make  that  room  look  anything  like  what  I  wanted  without  it.  And  I  kept 
seeing  how  beautiful  it  would  be  with  those  gold  colored  satin  curtains  of  your 
aunt  Sophy's  falling  back  from  the  windows  on  each  side  of  it.  And  I  sat 
down  and  stared  at  the  spot,  and  felt  as  if  I  didn't  want  the  house  at  all  if  I 
couldn't  have  that  cabinet.  And  I  thought  you  might  go  without  your  cigars 
and  your  claret  and  your  horses  a  couple  of  years,  and  we  could  easily  have  it. " 

"Kind  of  you,  and  cheerful  for  me." 

"Oh,  I  didn't  think  anything  about  that  part  of  it.  Just  fancy!  I 
thought  you  were  the  most  selfish  man  in  the  world,  and  I  was  the  most  un- 
happy woman;  and  all  men  were  selfish,  and  all  women  were  slaves;  and — 
and  that  ebony  and  gold  cabinet  was  obscuring  my  whole  outlook  on  life.  I 
felt  so  angry  with  you,  and  with  fate,  and  with  everything,  that  hot,  scalding- 
hot  tears  would  have  shaken  down  if  you  had  happened  to  come  just  then. 
I'm  so  glad  you  didn't,  Lawrence,  dear;  I  couldn't  have  spoken  to  save  my 
life,  and  I  should  have  run  directly  out  of  the  room  for  fear,  if  I  did  speak,  I 
should  say  something  horrid.' 

"Should  you,  indeed?     And  do  you  imagine  I  shouldn't  have  followed?" 

"Oh,  I  should  have  been  running." 

"And  whose  legs  are  longest,  puss?" 

"Well,  that's  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Just  then  the  whirlwind  came  up, 
and  the  window-places  being  open,  all  the  dust  of  the  building,  all  the  shav- 
ings and  splinters  and  lime  and  sand  about,  seemed  to  make  a  sudden  lurch 
into  the  room,  and  I  couldn't  see  across  it.  And  there  I  was  in  my  new  hat! 
And  I  made  for  the  door  as  fast  as  my  feet  could  fly." 

"Silliest  thing  you  could  do." 

"I  suppose  so;  for  when  I  was  out-doors,  the  boards  on  the  scaffoldings 
were  pitching  through  the  air  at  such  a  rate  that  I  could  neither  stay  there 
nor  go  back;  and  I  saw  that  little  shanty  just  round  the  corner,  and  ran  in." 

"That  was  sensible." 

"Thanks.  And  there  she  was,  pots  and  pails  about  the  door,  and  a  hen  just 
blowing  in  'before  me,  and  a  parcel  of  dirty-faced,  barefooted  children  tum- 
bling round.  And  such  a  place!  -  It  fairly  made  me  low-spirited  to  look  at  it. 
I  was  in  mortal  fear  of  getting  a  grease  spot  on  my  dress.  But  I  was  in  be- 
fore I  knew  it,  and  there  was  no  help  for  it,  and  the  wind  was  blowing  so  I 
had  to  stay. 

"And  the  lady  of  that  house  read  you  a  lesson?" 

"Such  a  lesson!  You'd  have  thought,  to  begin  with,  that  it  was  a  palace. 
She  did  the  honors  like  a  little  duchess.  It  didn't  occur  to  her,  apparently, 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  55 

that  things  were  squalid.  And  that  made  it  so  much  easier  than  if  she  apolo- 
gized, and  you  were  forced  to  tell  polite  fibs  and  make  believe  it  was  all  right, 
you  know.  She  was  a  trifle  vexed  because  the  face  of  one  of  the  children 
wasn't  clean,  and  afterward  she  repentingly  gave  him  the  molasses  jug  to 
keep  him  quiet;  but  another  of  the  children  was  such  a  little  darling!  Well, 
presently  her  tongue  was  loose." 

"Humph!" 

"Humph?  Didn't  you  want  to  hear  about  it?  Oh,  I  know  the  whole  story 
of  my  tongue,  but  I  find  you  like  to  listen  to  it." 

"So  I  do,  my  dear;  so  I  do.     And  then?" 

"Well,  as  I  was  saying,  presently  her  tongue  was  loose,  and  I  had  the 
benefit  of  her  experience.  And  I  know  she  has  a  good-for-naught  of  a  hus- 
band, whom  she  loves  a  great  deal  better  than  I  love  you — oh  yes  she  does, 
for  she  seems  never  to  have  thought  one  hard  thing  concerning  him,  and  I 
was  thinking  so  many  of  you,  you  know!  And  there  she  is,  and  has  been, 
with  her  cooking  stove  and  table,  her  two  chairs,  a  bed,  and  a  crib,  with  a  con- 
tented spirit  and  a  patient  soul,  and  her  highest  ambition  and  her  wildest  day- 
dream just  to  have" 

"An  ebony  and  gold  cabinet?" 

"Oh,  no,  no!  Do  drive  faster,  Lawrence.  How  this  horse  does  crawl' 
I  want  to  get  it  up  to  her  to-night.  A  bureau.  To  think  of  it,  only  a  bureau! 
You  needn't  laugh  at  me.  I've  an  awful  cold  in  my  head.  And  I  mean  she  shall 
have  it,  if  it  takes  every  cent  you  gave  me  for  my  new  jacket.  I'll  wear  the 
old  one.  I  think  I  can  get  what  she'll  consider  a  beauty,  though,  for  twelve 
dollars,  or  thereabouts.  Drive  to  Veneer's,  please,  dear.  I  do  feel  in  such  a 
hurry,  when  it  takes  such  a  little  bit  to  make  a  woman  happy. " 

"An  ebony  and  gold  cabinet,  for  instance.  ' 

"Oh,  nonsense!  How  you  do  love  to  tease,  Lawrence!  I  never  want  to 
hear  of  such  a  thing  again.  I  wouldn't  have  it  now." 

"Stop,  stop,  good  wife!  You'll  say  too  much.  You  silly  little  woman, 
didn't  you  know  that  ebony  and  gold  cabinet  which  you  and  Mrs.  Watrous 
saw  was  made  for  the  place  between  your  windows?" 


56  STEPPING    STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


CHAPTER    THIRD. 


A   Pause   By   the   Way, 

Who  know  to  live  and  know  to  die, 
Their  souls  are  sale,  tfieir  triumph  nigh. 

— Anon. 

Who  sweeps  a  room  as  to  God's  law 
Makes  that  and  the  action  fine, 

—  Herbert 

Never  content  yourself  with  doing  your  second  best. 

—  Gen.  Phil.  Sheridan. 

Has  made  me  King!  Now  in  my  new  estate 
What  duties  must  I  do,  what  honors  bear? 
More  than  all  men  the  King  must  feel  the  weight 
Of  constant  self-restraint,  of  watchful  care; 
Beneath  his  firm  control  his  passions  bring. 
And  rule  himself  if  he  would  be  a  King. 

-S.  M.  Day. 

But  Pallas  where  she  stood 
Somewhat  apart,  her  clear  and  bared  limbs 
O'er  thwarted  with  the  brazen-headed  spear 
Upon  the  pearly  shoulder  leaning  coid. 
The  while,  alone,  her  full  and  earnest  eye 
Over  her  snow-cold  breast  and  angry  cheek 
Kept  watch,  waiting  decision,  made  reply. 
'•'Self -reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control, 
These  three  alone  lead  life  to  sovereign  power. 
.Yet  not  for  pcwer  (power  of  herself 
Would  come  uncalled  for),  but  to  live  by  law, 
Acting  the  law  we  live  by  without  fear; 
And,  because  right  is  right,  to  follow  right, 
Were  wisdom  in  the  scorn  of  consequence." 

—  Tennyson. 


Self-Reliance  and  Self-Reverence. 

We  should  do  poorly  with  our  content  with  life  as  it  is,  if  we  did  not  find 
one  of  the  strongest  and  firmest  of  our  stepping-stones  as  we  cross  the  stream 
to  our  shining  goal  of  happiness,  in  the  habit  of  self-reliance  and  self-rever- 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


57 


THE  SWEET   INFLUENCE  OF  A   LOVING   SYMPATHY. 

ence.     The   eloquent   preacher    Whitefield  is    reported    to    have    asked  Ten 
nant:    "  Do  you  not  rejoice  that  your  time  is  so  near  .at  hand,   when   you 
will    be   called    home   and   freed  from  all  the  difficulties  ot    this   checkered 
scene? 

"No,"  was  the  reply.     "My  business  is  to  live  as  long  as  I  can,  as. well  as  I 


58  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

can,  and  to  serve  my  Lord  and  Master  as  faithfully  as  I   can,  until  He  shall 
think  proper  to  call  me  home." 

The  aged  saint  knew  that  to  every  one  is  appointed  his  place  and  duty, 
and  that  he  is  to  fill  it  and  to  fulfil  it  till  relieved,  and  that  thus  his  character 
is  developed  and  strengthened.  "The  greater  the  power  of  thought  in  any 
individual,"  some  one  has  said,  "the  greater  is  his  spontaneous  action;  and 
the  greater  the  spontaneous  action  the  more  completely  will  he  live  and  be. 
A  thousand  influences  lie  in  wait  to  ensnare  mortal  man.  The  whole  world  is 
an  influence.  The  strongest  of  all  is  individual  character.  Character  makes 
the  man.  Man  can  boast  of  nothing  as  his  own,  except  the  energy  which  he 
displays.  If  unable  to  arouse  this  energy  let  him  assume  it,  let  him  place 
himself  by  a  sudden  effort  in  circumstances  where  he  must  will."  Character 
then  is  developed  by  doing  and  not  by  dreaming. 


St.  Augustine's  Dream. 

When  St.  Augustine  determined  to  give  three  days  and  nights  to  prayer 
and  meditation  concerning  the  deep  mystery  of  the  Trinity,  on  the  third  night 
he  was  very  naturally  overcome  with  sleep.  In  his  sleep  he  dreamed  that  he 
was  walking  by  the  sea,  where  a  child  had  made  a  hole  in  the  sand  with  his 
tiny  heel  and  then  pouring  water  into  it  from  a  shell  he  held  in  his  little  hand. 
"What  dost  thou?"  said  St.  Augustine.  "I  am  pouring  the  sea  into  this 
hole,"  said  the  boy.  "That  cannot  be  done,  my  child,"  said  the  saint,  with 
a  pitying  smile.  Then  all  at  once  a  gleam  of  heaven  shone  in  the  child's  eyes 
—it  was  no  longer  a  child.  "I  can  do  that,  Augustine,"  he  said,  with  a 
mighty  voice,  "as  readily  as  thou  canst  understand  the  nature  of  thy  thoughts 
and  of  the  Trinity." 


The  Spiritual   Mind. 

But  this  does  not  imply  that  one  should  not  dwell  upon  spiritual  thoughts 
at  the  proper  time,  should  not,  in  effect,  be  more  spiritually  minded  than  any- 
thing else,  for  to  be  spiritually  minded  is  to  have  a  sense,  a  conviction,  an  as- 
sured knowledge  of  the  reality,  solidity  and  security  of  spiritual  things.  "To 
find  in  the  unseen  region  of  a  heavenly  existence  a  source  of  motive  power, 
a  vast  auxiliary,  an  inexhaustible  reservoir  of  strength,  coming  in  aid  of  nat- 
ural conscience,  which  alone  is  insufficient  to  direct  or  reclaim  us,  but  which  we 
enforce  from  the  divine  works,  irresistibly  triumphs  with  our  first  moral 


A  HAPPY  FACE  DOES  A  SERVICE  TO  HUMANITY. 


60  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

victory.  A  supreme  uncreated  excellence  and  glory  must  haunt,  elevate, 
sanctify,  and  draw  us  to  another  citizenship  than  that  which  we  hold  amid 
these  clay  built  abodes;  before  the  spiritual  mind,  which  is  life  and  peace,  can 
be  unfolded  within  us."  Apropos  of  this,  it  is  Bishop  Huntingdon  who  says 
"that  spiritual  serenity  is  spiritual  strength;  it  comes  in  by  no  softness  of  sen- 
timent, but  by  thorough  work.  It  comes  by  a  faith  that  emboldens  and  en- 
ergizes the  whole  soul  "  Spiritual  or  not,  every  one  has  his  own  life  to  live, 
and  to  live  alone,  alone  as  he  came  into  being,  alone  as  he  will  go  out  into 
the  next  stage  of  being.  "There  is  something  awful  in  this  terrible  solitude 
if  we  look  at  it.  ...  One  may  indeed  strive  to  break  in  upon  the  stillness  of 
our  solitary  being,  by  crowding  others  around  us,  by  the  tever  of  excite- 
ment, or  the  sweet  influence  of  a  loving  sympathy,  but  in  all  the  pauses  of  out- 
ward things  the  solemn  voice  comes  back  and  the  vision  of  our  single,  proper, 
solitary  being  overshadows  the  spirits.'  We  have  each  one  this  burden  of  a 
separate  soul,  and  we  must  bear  it.  How  do  all  deep  thinking  persons,  even 
in  the  daily  routine,  live  apart  from  others,  and  more  or  less  feel  that  they  do 
so.  Even  ordinary  life  hears  voices  which  add  their  witness  to  the  truth  if 
we  will  listen  to  them."  It  is  in  this  inner  solitude  in  which  we  all  live  that 
our  habit  of  self-respect,  of  something  more,  of  self-reverence,  takes  rise. 


Reticence. 

We  cultivate  it  at  first,  very  like,  by  a  fit  and  proper  reticence.  We  re- 
member that  the  world  is  not  very  much  interested  in  our  especial  suffering  or 
joy,  and  that  our  haps  and  mishaps  have  not  the  interest  of  romances  to  other 
people.  There  are,  indeed,  let  us  say  by  the  way,  many  sorrows  and  troubles  of 
which  the  old  proverb,  "least  said  soonest  mended/'  holds  true.  There  are 
some  things  best  hidden  in  secret  receptacles  with  the  lid  shut  down,  rather 
than  aired  in  the  sight  of  all.  Whoever  wears  a  happy  face  does  a  service  to 
humanity;  for  it  is  infinitely  tetter  that  the  world  should  seem  full  of  sunshine 
than  of  gloom,  that  the  general  heart  should  be  lifted  in  gratitude  rather  than 
abased  with  rankling  injury;  and  happiness  meanwhile,  or  its  semblance,  be- 
gets happiness,  like  a  dollar  at  usury,  and  enriches  the  moral  world  as  sun- 
shine does  the  earth.  Those  who  go  about  baring  their  private  woes  might 
learn,  if  they  were  able  to  lose  the  thread  of  their  discourse  tor  one  moment,  that 
most  of  the  rest  of  the  race  are  busy  with  the  thread  of  their  own  discourses, 
and  that  although  they  turn  to  listen  to  a  plaint  and  even  to  give  a  share  of 
sympathy  and  pity,  it  is  quite  as  a  matter  aside,  an  affair  as  much  of  self- 
respect  as  of  respect  for  us,  and  they  are  presently  hurrying  on  with  their  own 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


61 


WE    ARE    MOST    OF    US    INCLINED     TO    SYMPATHIZE. 


interest  again  almost  as  indifferently  as  Nature  herself  seems  to  hurry. 
But  even  allowing  that  the  sympathy  is  very  great,  given  for  a  long  time, 
without  stint,  and  actively  felt,  there  comes  an  end  to  all  things,  and  perpet- 
ual draughts  must  only  reach  the  lees  of  that.  If  one  is  going  to  demand 
sympathy  forever,  one  should  be  very  careful  as  to  the  manner  in  which  it  is 
demanded,  as  it  is  no  impossible  thing  to  wear  out  the  patience  even  of  those 
who  love  us  most. 


62  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Real  Troubles. 

Real  troubles  can  never  fail  to  receive  the  tribute  of  warm  and  enduring 
compassion ;  but  real  troubles  do  not  last  forever,  nor  are  they  the  ones  con- 
cerning which  the  most  rout  is  made,  for  deep  sorrow  is  apt  to  seek  to  wrap 
itself  in  silence,  and  of  the  literally  cureless  diseases  of  the  body,  these  the 
sufferer  conceals  to  the  last  possible  moment,  and  those,  by  the  very  fever  they 
excite  in  the  blood,  kindle  cheerfulness.  We  are  so  constituted,  both  physi- 
cally and  spiritually,  that,  under  too  heavy  a  burden  for  us  to  bear,  we  sink 
and  fail ;  and  real  trouble  of  any  amount  wears  us  out,  be  it  of  body  or  of  soul, 
before  any  great  lapse  of  time,  and  puts  an  end  to  any  need  of  sympathy- 
wears  us  out  before  we  have  a  chance  to  wear  patience  out.  It  is,  except  for 
very  rare  and  phenomenal  cases,  the  unreal  troubles,  the  actually  slight  ones, 
those  to  be  in  some  measure  avoided,  mitigated,  or  overlooked,  that  are  spread 
before  other  people  with  loudest  iteration  and  demand  for  sympathy. 

This  is  especially  to  be  noticed  in  cases  of  partial  illness,  where  much  dis- 
comfort is  experienced,  some  pain,  great  weariness,  perhaps,  yet  not  positive 
danger ;  but  you  will  observe  that  where  there  is  an  invalid  suffering  such 
illness,  no  guest  enters  the  door  who  is  not  hospitably  entreated  with  a  detailed 
account  of  that  invalid's  least  symptoms — and,  unless  the  guest  be  nurse  or 
physician,  to  what  result?  It  is  even  then  ten  to  one  if  the  ccmplainer  be 
well  listened  to,  the  first  words  having  recalled  some  similar  instance  in  the 
guest's  experience,  impatience  to  recount  which,  according  to  the  very  same 
tendency,  dulls  the  ear  to  all  the  rest  of  the  sickly  recital.  It  is  perhaps  ex- 
ceedingly sad  and  dreary  to  be  obliged  to  suffer  as  this  invalid  does ;  we  pity 
greatly;  but  when  the  invalid  still  lives  on,  growing  no  worse,  we  sometimes 
feel  obliged  to  husband  our  resources,  and  to  question  if  good  taste  would  not 
try  to  wear  the  bright  face  instead  of  saddening  the  world  with  the  darkest 
side.  In  reality,  we  are  most  of  us  inclined  to  sympathize  generously  with 
sorrow,  with  injustice,  with  pain ;  but  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  pre- 
vents our  being  able,  if  we  are  willing,  to  endure  a  too  prolonged  strain,  and 
it  may  be  pronounced  as  an  axiom  that  the  individual  receives  the  best  and 
surest  sympathy  who  makes  the  least  outcry,  and  bears  the  sad  lot  with 
fortitude.  - 

It  is  a  little  singular,  withal,  tnat  the  possessors  of  these  numerous  pri- 
vate woes — private  ?  one  should  rather  say  public ! — so  frequently  forget  com- 
mon self-respect.  What  would  the  same  individuals  say  of  the  beggar  who 
goes  about  showing  his  sores?  And  are  they  doing  any  differently?  Are 
they  not  exhibiting  a  corresponding  sort  of  uncleanness,  the  same  want  of 
modesty  and  shame,  making  themselves,  as  far  as  in  them  lies,  and  with  the 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  63 

mere  difference — and  not  always  that — that  'exists  between  the  ills  of  body 
and  mind,  as  loathsome  in  all  comparative  degree? 

The  chief  thing  to  be  done  in  this  regard  by  those  who  consider  them- 
selves the  victims  of  any  remarkable  affliction  is  always  to  remember  that, 
in  spite  of  all  kindness  shown,  nobody  is  so  interesting  to  another  as  he  is 
to  himself,  and  that  dignity  requires  one  to  keep  one's  sorrows,  as  well  as 
one's  joys,  rather  sacred  than  otherwise.  As  a  rule,  in  the  ecstasies  of  our 
great  happiness  or  our  great  grief,  we  prefer  to  be  alone.  Why  in  our  small 
happinesses  and  small  griefs  do  we  need  so  much  more  companionship?  It 
seems  as  if  one  must,  after  all,  be  the  possessor  of  a  very  reassuring  amount 
of  vanity  to  suppose  that  one  should  receive  more  consideration  or  consolation 
from  one's  acquaintances  than  Job  did  from  his  friends. 

If  keeping  our  woes  to  ourselves  is  one  help  to  self-respect,  another  is  the 
habit  of  taking  life  as  it  comes,  sure  that  it*is  the  best  for  us  that  comes,  that 
we  are  not  inferior  wretches  in  the  divine  eyes,  but  that  we  are  here  to  per- 
form an  appointed  part.  We  will  not  then  spend  time  in  waiting  for  a  path 
to  open  for  us:  "We  will  go  ahead  and  open  it."  "By  doing  my  own  work," 
says  Ruskin,  "poor  as  it  may  seem  to  some,  I  shall  better  fulfil  God's  end  in 
making  me  what  I  am,  and  more  truly  glorify  His  name  than  if  I  were  either 
going  out  of  my  own  sphere  to  do  the  work  of  another,  or  calling  another  into 
my  sphere  to  do  my  proper  work  for  me." 


The  Armor  of  Patience. 

There  are  people  to  be  sure,  who  may  not  open  the  path,  to 
whom  it  is  appointed  to  wait.  "They  also  serve  who  only  stand 
and  wait,"  said  the  blind  poet.  And  we  shall  find  those  who  really 
seem  to  have  little  else  to  do  than  to  wait:  perhaps  they  lost  their 
places  early  in  this  great  procession  of  travelers  from  one  darkness  to  another, 
and  so  nothing  comes  to  them  at  the  appointed  time;  they  wait  for  love,  for 
home,  for  happiness,  for  work,  for  wealth,  for  fame ;  usually  they  wait  in 
vain,  and  at  last  they  have  only  to  wait  for  death.  Whether  it  is  owing  to 
some  of  the  cross  purposes  of  fate  that  these  people  are  so  unfortunate,  or 
whether  it  is  the  fault  of  their  own  organism  that  they  have  failed  to  profit  by 
•occasion,  there  is  always  something  very  pathetic  about  the  thought  of  their 
unsatisfied  lot.  Others  of  us  know  something  of  the  annoyances  of  waiting, 
are  acquainted  with  the  impatience,  the  nervousness,  the  disappointment,  if 
not  anger,  the  vexation  of  vainly  expecting  some  trifle  that  in  reality  is  unim- 
portant; some  of  us  know  the  misery  of  waiting  for  those  who  do  not  return; 


64  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

every  one  has  listened  for  desired  footsteps,  heard  them  coming  from  afar, 
heard  them  go  by;  and  if  such  waiting  be  misery,  we  can  paint  to  ourselves 
what  a  lifetime  of  waiting  is.  Of  course,  with  the  patient  sufferers  there  is 
not  the  poignancy  of  acute  disappointment  in  a  matter  of  pressing  present  in- 
terest, such  as  that  where  hangs  the  life  or  welfare  of  a  beloved  one,  or  the 
pivot  of  our  personal  fortunes;  but  with  them  it  is  one  dull  expectancy,  one 
long  ache;  other  waitings  come  to  an  end,  but  this  knows  neither  the  pierc- 
ing pang  of  certain  sorrow  and  denial,  nor  ever  any  sudden  lifting  of  gratifica- 
tion and  content.  The  outlook,  the  hopes,  the  experience,  narrows  as  chance 
never  arrives,  and  fruition  never  happens,  and  they  who  look  at  the  enduring 
patience  of  one  thus  waiting  are  sure  that,  if  for  no  other  reason,  there  must 
needs  be  an  immortality  in  order  to  do  justice  to  those  thus  wronged  of  what 
their  soul  most  craves,  although  they  have  everything  else  in  the  world.  For 
it  is  of  no  consequence  to  any  what  else  they  have  in  the  world  if  they  have 
not  the  one  precise  thing  wanted.  He  who  wants  the  hymns  of  Homer  can 
not  be  put  off  with  the  Mecanique  Celeste,  or,  to  go  from  great  to  less,  it  makes 
no  odds  to  the  woman  who  has  no  gloves  that  she  has  two  dozen  handker- 
chiefs; under  no  conditions  will  she  who  longs  for  a  home  of  her  own  be  quite 
satisfied  with  the  home  of  other  people,  and  he  who  wishes  for  recognition  of 
genius  does  not  care  to  be  pointed  out  for  his  fine  eyes.  He  waits  foi  recog- 
nition ;  she  waits  for  love  and  home ;  another  waits  for  a  chance  of  self-educa- 
tion ;  another  for  freedom  from  a  hated  bond ;  and  whether  they  wait  all  their 
lives,  or  get  the  desire  at  last,  while  they  are  waiting  it  is  pitiful.  It  seems 
as  if  there  were  not  happiness  enough  in  this  world  to  go  round.  "There's 
chairs  enough, "  said  the  suddenly  inundated  country  host,  "but  there's  too 
much  company;"  and  in  this  case  there  is  no  help  for  it  but  that  some  must 
go  to  the  wall  and  wait. 

Possibly  there  are  some  of  these  waiting  ones  who  are  waiting  for  some- 
thing more  serious  than  any  of  the  small  affairs  of  the  daily  paths,  who  await 
an  answer  to  the  great  riddle  of  life,  for  the  first  glimpse  of  the  things  beyond, 
and  have  girded  themselves  with  the  armor  of  patience,  till  sight  and  knowl- 
edge shall  be  vouchsafed ;  and  others  there  are  who,  undisturbed  by  such  emo- 
tion, wait  only  for  the  leading  of  the  power  that  rules  the  universe  to  do  the 
will  of  that  power,  and  help  onward  its  work ;  and  yet  others  who,  all  hope  of 
further  helping  over,  fold  their  hands  and  wait  only  for  the  word  that  gives 
them  the  freedom  of  the  eternal  city.  But  all  such  are  waiting  in  good  com- 
pany— they  wait  with  the  hosts  who  stand  with  folded  wings  about  heaven's 
throne. 

If  there  is  something  lofty  in  this  sainted  waiting,  not  for  the  blisses  of 
this  life,  but  for  the  communion  of  saints  beyond,  all  the  other  waiting  dc- 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  65 

pends  for  its  merit  upon  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  taken.  If  it  is  quarrelsome, 
petulant,  impatient,  we  fail  to  be  touched  by  it;  if  it  is  idle  and  shiftless  it 
renders  us  indignant,  and  disapproval  almost  destroys  pity;  if  it  is,  on  the 
whole,  merely  a  waiting  for  opportunity  to  come,  as  the  boy  waited  for  the 
river  to  flow  by  that  he  might  cross,  unaware  that  opportunity  is  almost 
always  in  the  passing  moment  if  we  have  the  knack  of  seizing  it,  it  receives 
only  a  pity  that  is  too  near  contempt  to  be  pleasant. 

Yet  it  behooves  us,  be  the  waiting  of  what  sort  it  may,  to  keep  some 
sparks  of  a  better  pity  undestroyed,  as  we  hope  for  it  ourselves,  for  in  one 
shape  or  another  we  are  all  of  us  waiting  for  something  that  in  all  our  three- 
score years  and  ten  we  fail  to  find. 


A  Mutual  Dependence. 

Although  we  must  stand  alone  in  the  spiritual  life,  we  can  not  stand  alone 
in  the  material  one,  for  life  is  like  a  great  interwoven  fabric  where  one  thread 
holds  another.  Think  of  the  way  in  which  all  the  relations  of  our  social  life 
are  complicated,  so  that  no  one  lives  in  the  civilized  world  who  is  not  doing 
something  for  some  one  else,  either  physically  or  intellectually  or  spiritually, 
paying  rent,  it  might  be  said,  for  the  lease  of  life.  The  bad  are  pulling  down 
the  good,  the  good  are  lifting  up  the  bad,  the  poor  are  working  for  the  rich, 
the  rich  are  spending  for  the  poor,  and  even  the  baby  of  the  pauper  is  creating 
a  demand  that  some  one  must  supply. 

The  wealthy  woman  stepping  from  her  stone  mansion  to  her  carriage  is 
an  illustration,  in  her  mere  material  affairs,  of  the  way  in  which  all  humanity 
works  together,  and  works  for  each  member  of  itself.  To  say  nothing  of 
those  influences  that  have  shaped  her  heart  and  soul,  how  many  workers  have 
contributed  to  send  her  abroad  in  the  guise  in  which  she  appears  ?  to  how 
many  workers  has  she  contributed  a  fractional  support?  The  quarry-man  has 
wrought  the  stone  for  the  mansion;  the  kiln-man  has  burned  the  brick;  the 
woodman  has  felled  the  lumber;  the  miner  has  sent  the  iron  and  lead;  carpen- 
ter and  turner,  mason  and  blacksmith  and  marble-worker  and  plumber,  and 
all  the  kindred  trades,  have  been  at  her  service.  The  watchman  has  patrolled 
the  street  at  night  for  her  soft  slumbers  in  that  mansion ;  the  laborer  has  made 
that  street,  and  has  cleaned  it;  the  lamp-lighter  has  lighted  the  gas  before  it; 
powerful  officials,  learned  doctors  of  the  boards  of  health,  committees  of  the 
city  government,  have  seen  that  all  this  was  properly  done,  and  she  has  paid 
her  stipend  to  assessors,  recorders,  and  receivers  of  taxes  for  having  it  done. 
Slaughterers,  leather-dressers,  carriage-makers,  again,  have  afforded  her  the 


66  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

coach  into  which  she  steps ;  some  one  of  the  old  countries,  or  rather  the  influ- 
ences working  there,  have  probably  sent  her  coachman  and  footman ;  the  far- 
mer, who  supplies  much  on  her  table,  has  raised  her  horses.  And  for  that 
same  table  has  the  vaquero  driven  the  herd  of  steers  that  came  sweeping  up 
from  bayou  and  prairie  of  the  far  New  Mexican  and  Texan  regions;  have 
flocks  of  fowl  been  brought  from  the  Northwest ;  have  fruits  been  pulled  in 
the  tropics,  and  sweetmeats  been  sent  from  the  East ;  has  the  fisher  in  the 
Columbia  taken  salmon,  and  the  Hindoo  on  the  bank  of  the  Ganges  sent  hot 
sauces;  has  the  peasant  of  the  Rhine  tended  his  grapes,  and  pressed  the  must. 
Look  then  at  her  array :  the  negro  has  bent  under  the  sun  picking  the  cotton 
that  enters  into  some  portion  of  it;  the  flax-raiser  has  been  in  her  employ; 
the  barefooted  Irish  girl  at  home  has  turned  the  woven  linen  for  her  in  sun 
and  dew;  the  maidens  of  France  have  tended  the  silkworms  for  her,  and  reeled 
the  cocoons;  the  shuttles  have  tossed  to  and  fro  for  her  in  the  looms  of  Lyons; 
swarthy  Orientals  have  squatted  at  their  rude  frames  embellishing  the  rich 
stuffs  she  folds  about  her ;  while  slaves  in  the  diamond  mines  have  dug  and 
delved  for  her  at  one  side  of  the  globe,  and  fishermen  have  stripped  the  seal 
at  the  other.  For  her,  too,  have  the  keels  of  ships  been  laid,  to  bring  her 
these  silks  and  cashmeres  and  furs^and  jewels ;  for  her  have  sailors  braved  the 
mid-ocean  storms,  have  pilots  gone  out  to  bring  the  ships  to  port  through  curl- 
ing breakers ;  for  her  the  watcher  in  his  solitary  sea-washed  tower  kindles  the 
light-house  lamp  each  evening  on  the  edge  of  dark.  For  her,  too,  have  the 
shining  lines  of  railway  steel  been  laid,  and  the  trains  led  thundering  over 
them  by  engineer  and  fireman,  bringing  her  fineries  and  dainties ;  for  her  has 
the  daily  paper  been  struck  off,  with  editor,  reporter,  and  printer  on  her  pay- 
roll ;  for  her  delectation  did  the  morning  news  run  at  midnight  over  the  tele- 
graph wires ;  for  her  safety  has  the  sentinel  paced  all  night  on  the  lonely  sea- 
wall in  the  harbor  defense,  and  have  bodies  of  troops  been  moved  up  and 
down  on  the  frontier  haunted  by  the  tomahawk:  For  her  pleasure  has  the  in- 
spiration of  the  musician  come,  has  painter  painted,  and  statuary  carved ; 
has  the  performer  spent  weary  hours  of  practice  with  his  instrument ;  has  the 
actor  plodded  through  his  lines,  the  dancer  through  her  steps,  before  the  cur- 
tain rises  on  the  scene  where  all  joy  and  suffering  are  fused  in  swift  sparkle 
and  beauty  For  her  the  judge  sits  on  his  bench  to  administer  justice;  for 
her  even  the  chief  of  the  nation  holds  the  reins  of  power,  and  one  might  say 
that  for  her  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  exist,  and  kings  and  queens  and  em- 
perors sit  upon  their  thrones.  And  to  each  and  all  of  these,  from  peasant  to 
prince,  who  thus  work  for  her  she  pays  tribute,  and  is,  in  turn,  their  feuda- 
tory. She  can  not  do  without  them,  as  they  can  not  do  without  her;  her  life 
is  their  life,  her  wishes  give  them  their  wishes.  And  what  is  true  of  the  rich 


THE  GOOD  ARE  LIFTING  UP  THE  PAP. 


68  STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

woman  is  true  of  the  poor  woman  as  well.  For  although  she  have  not  a  dol- 
lar but  what  she  earns  with  her  hard  and  pitiful  laundry-work,  she  does  not 
spend  it  without  receiving  service  and  paying  tribute  also  to  all  the  crafts  and 
trades  that  supply  her  needs,  and  the  radius  in  which  she  is  felt  is  just  as  the 
circle  of  her  wants  is  wide  or  narrow;  and  the  rich  woman  is  her  "bound 
woman"  again,  for  one  furnishes  the  other  with  the  clean  linen  that  she  wants, 
and  one  furnishes  the  other  with  the  money  that  she  wants!  With  the  un- 
equal fortune  of  the  two  there  is  also  a  mutual  dependence, 

And  if  the  dependence  is  so  intimate  in  purely  material  things,  how  close 
is  it  in  things  of  the  spiritual  domain,  in  the  mental  and  moral  world.  What 
surmise  and  suspicion  of  evil  does  not  swing  from  one  to  another  in  scandal, 
till  it  mows  down  its  swath  before  it?  What  theft,  in  the  simple  injury  of  the 
loss  of  the  loser,  does  not  entail  trouble  passing  again  from  one  to  another, 
and  in  the  injury  of  the  crime  to  the  taker  does  not  entail  other  trouble  on  all 
with  whom  his  degradation  comes  in  contact,  not  only  in  his  diminished 
power  to  do  good,  but  in  his  increased  aptitude  to  do  evil  ?  What  wicked 
thought  can  prompt  the  speaking  of  a  wicked  word  that  its  vibration  shall  not 
cause  the  air  to  thrill,  and  make  some  other  voice  its  echo?  For  we  can 
neither  do  nor  think  wrong  without  injuring,  in  degree — as  the  cuttle-fish 
darkens  the  water  about  him — all  those  within  the  limit  of  our  influence.  Let 
us  be  ever  so  much  accountable  to  fate  and  to  our  consciences  as  separate 
individuals,  we  are  yet  more  certainly  congregated  and  bound  together  in  one 
great  circulation  and  interchange  than  the  atoms  of  some  vast  polyp  building 
its  coral  reef  in  the  South  Pacific,  and  every  one's  self-respect  and  reverence 
must  have  its  effect  upon  the  individuality  of  every  other  soul. 


Man's  Majesty. 

There  are,  however,  those  who  call  themselves  philosophers  to  whom  self- 
reverence,  in  any  high  degree,  seems  as  futile  as  any  of  their  early  hopes  and 
dreams,  since  they  consider  the  human  race  and  its  concerns  to  be  only  among 
the  smaller  affairs  of  the  universe.  These  people  declare  that  there  is  some- 
thing a  little  mortifying  to  their  vanity  in  the  sense  of  the  insignificance  of 
the  human  race  which  almost  invariably  overcomes  them  when  they  see  it  in 
a  mass.  Not,  be  it  understood,  when  they  see  it  in  the  roaring,  turbulent 
mass  of  an  infuriated  mob;  then  it  assumes,  indeed,  some  of  the  greatness  of 
elemental  forces,  and  swells  and  surges  like  the  sea,  with  one  wave  fortifying 
another ;  but  in  the  common  stream  of  population  going  to  and  fro  upon 
a  thousand  pitiful  small  errands  along  some  thoroughfare.  Watching  this 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


69 


stream  for  any  length  of  time,  it  irresistibly  occurs 
to  them  that  just  so  the  ants  go  and  come  with  their 
little  burdens,  their  wealth  of  grains  of  wheat  and 
barley  bigger  than  themselves,  just  so  their  soldiers 
march  to  battle,  just  so  their  slaves  toil  on  at  home; 
and  they  half  won- 
der if  to  any  su- 
perior eyes  that 
chance  to  rest  on 
us  we  can  be  of 
more  consequence 
than  these  ants  are 
in  our  own.  At 
the  same  time  they 
confess  that  it  is 
odd  that  recur- 
rence and  multi- 
tude should  make 
small  and  common 
that  which  in  the 
single  and  isolated 
instance  is  often 
found  to  be  grand 
and  uncommon — 
in  the  great  sena- 
tor, mighty  sol- 
dier, singing  poet, 
lovely  woman.  Yet 
we  have  only  to 
take  the  separate 
features  of  any  of 

these  isolated  instances  of  humanity — say,  the  malcontents — to  find  the  same 
sensation  recurring,  and  to  feel  assured  that  if  man  be  made  in  the  image  of 
any  thing  divine,  it  is  his  inner  and  spiritual  body,  and  not  all  the  varying 
eyes  and  ears  and  noses.  For  if  it  were  one  of  these,  even  so  much  as  one  ear, 
for  example,  which  one,  of  all  that  we  meet?  This  little  curled,  pink-rimmed, 
and  shell-like  ear  of  the  maiden,  with  its  jeweled  tip,  this  pair  that  stand  out 
on  either  side  of  the  head  like  vase  handles,  these  that  remind  one  of  the  an- 
swer of  the  worthy  who,  on  being  asked  if  the  story  he  was  about  to  relate 
was  fit  for  the  auditor's  ears,  replied  that  they  were  long  enough,  or  those 


TO    EVERY    EARNEST,    STRIVING    SOUL. 


70  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

where  old  age,  as  it  too  often  does,  has  smoothed  out  all  the  charming  whorls 
and  creases,  and  left  only  a  large  flat  surface  of  cartilage,  those  that  hold 
themselves  pricked  up,  alert  companions,  as  if  they  meant  no  whisper  should 
escape  them,  those  pinned  back  so  flatly  that  what  goes  in  on  one  side  may 
easily  come  out  at  the  other,  those  that  wag  as  the  scalp  moves,  those  that 
have  the  pointed  segment  of  the  faun's  ear,  those  that  are  lobeless,  or 
those  that  project  themselves  into  space  like  a  trumpet?  Yet  when  one 
can  find  so  much  in  the  mere  outward  guise  of  so  small  a  portion  of  the 
frame,  so  tiny  a  member  as  the  ear,  and  is  aware  that  its  inner  construc- 
tion is  so  complicated  and  delicate  with  vibrant  membrane  and  laby- 
rinthine passage,  it  is  not  easy  to  recur  to  such  a  fancy  as  that  of  the  insig- 
nificance of  the  owner  of  such  an  instrument.  No!  Man 'who  has  dared, 
and  who  has  been  given  the  power  to  dare,  to  search  almighty  secrets,  to 
weigh  the  sun,  to  catch  the  colors  of  the  elements  from  which  stars  are  made, 
is  a  being  of  importance  in  the  creative  eyes,  and  he  owes  a  debt  of  self- 
respect  to  the  Power  that  made  him.  "Your  body,"  says  Rutherford,  "is  the 
dwelling-place  of  the  spirit,  and  therefore  for  the  love  you  carry  to  the  sweet 
Guest  give  a  due  regard  to  His  house  of  clay,  for  the  house  is  not  your  own." 
We  read  in  the  "Records  of  a  Quiet  Life"  that  it  is  one  of  the  hardest  things 
in  the  world  to  be  true  to  one's  self  in  one's  intercourse  with  others.  "There 
is  scarcely  anything  that  requires  more  real  courage.  How  little  is  there  of 
true  freedom  from  all  put-on  conversation  and  manner!  The  more  truly 
Christian  is  our  spirit,  the  more  truly  shall  we  rise  out  of  this  bondage, 
which  is  of  the  earth  earthly,  to  preserve  our  truth  and  uprightness  of  charac- 
ter, to  be  in  all  places  and  at  all  times  and  with  all  people  one  and  the  same, 
not  equally  open  or  equally  communicative,  but  equally  free  from  what  is 
artificial  and  constrained,  and  steadfast  in  keeping  fast  hold  of  those  princi- 
ples and  feelings  which  are  known  to  be  according  to  God's  will  and  law." 
The  great  poem  of  the  "Happy  Warrior"  does  not  apply  to  the  soldier 
merely,  but  to  every  earnest,  striving  soul  on  earth. 

"Who  is  the  Happy  Warrior?     Who  is  he 
That  every  man  in  arms  should  wish  to  be? 
It  is  the  generous  spirit,  who,  when  brought 
Among  the  tasks  of  real  life,  hath  wrought 
Upon  the  plan  that  pleased  his  boyish  thought; 
Whose  high  endeavors  are  an  inward  light 
That  makes  the  path  before  him  always  bright; 
Who,  with  a  natural  instinct  to  discern 
What  knowledge  can  perform,  is  diligent  to  learn, 
Abides  by  this  resolve,  and  stops  not  there. 
But  makes  his  moral  being  his  prime  care. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  7, 

But  who,  if  he  be  called  upon  to  face 

Some  awful  moment  to  which  'heaven  has  joine. 

Great  issues,  good  or  bad  for  human  kind, 

Is  happy  as  a  Lover,  and  attired 

With  sudden  brightness  like  a  man  inspired; 

And  through  the  heat  of  conflict  keeps  the  law 

In  calmness  made,  and  sees  what  he  foresaw; 

Or  if  an  unexpected  call  succeed, 

Come  when  it  will,  is  equal  to  the  need." 

I  have  thought  that  the  story  of  Miss  Moggaridge's  Provider  was  an  illus- 
tration of  that  sweet  self -reverence  which  implies  absolute  belief  and  truth  in 
Providence,  and  of  the  truth  of  the  saying  of  Thomas  A  Kempis  that,  "From 
a  pure  heart  proceedeth  the  fruit  of  a  good  life." 


Miss  Moggaridge's  Provider. 

The  way  in  which  people  interested  themselves  in  Miss  Moggaridge's 
affairs  would  have  been  a  curiosity  in  itself  anywhere  but  in  the  seacoast 
town  where  Miss  Moggaridge  lived.  But  there  it  had  become  so  much  a  mat- 
ter of  course  for  one  neighbor  to  discuss  the  various  bearings  of  all  the  inci- 
dents in  another  neighbor's  life,  and — if  unexplained  facts  still  remained  to 
supply  the  gap  from  fancy — in  addition  to  the  customary  duty  of  keeping 
the  other  neighbor's  conscience,  that  it  never  struck  a  soul  among  all  the  wor- 
thy tribes  there  that  they  were  doing  anything  at  all  out  of  the  way  in  gossip- 
ing, wondering,  conjecturing,  and  declaring  this,  that,  and  the  other  about 
Miss  Moggaridge's  business  after  a  fashion  that  would  have  made  any  one  but 
herself  perfectly  wild. 

But  Miss  Moggaridge  was  a  placid  soul,  and  as  the  fact  of  her  neighbor's 
gossip  implied  a  censure  which  perhaps  she  felt  to  be  not  altogether  unde- 
served, while,  on  the  other  hand,  their  wonder  was  not  entirely  uncomplimen- 
tary, she  found  herself  able  to  disregard  them  altogether,  and  in  answer  to 
query,  complaint,  or  expostulation  concerning  her  wicked  waste,  which  was  to 
make  woful  want,  always  met  her  interlocutor  with  the  sweet  and  gentle 
words,  "The  Lord  will  provide." 

Poor  Miss  Moggaridge's  father  had  been  that  extraordinary  phenomenon, 
a  clergyman  possessed  not  only  of  treasure  in  Heaven,  but  of  the  rustier  and 
more  corruptible  treasure  of  this  world's  goods — an  inherited  treasure,  by 
the  way,  which  he  did  not  have  time  to  scatter  to  the  four  winds  in  person,  as 
it  was  left  to  him  by  an  admirer  (to  whom  his  great  sermon  on  the  Seventh 


72  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Seal  had  brought  spiritual  peace),  but  a  few  years  before  his  death,  which 
happened  suddenly ;  and  the  property  was  consequently  divided  according  to 
his  last  will  and  testament  between  two  of  his  three  children,  giving  them  each 
a  modest  competency,  but  leaving  the  third  to  shift  for  himself,  as  he  always 
had  done.  The  first  thing  which  Miss  Moggaridge  did  with  her  freedom  and 
her  money  was  to  imitate  the  example  of  the  "fearless  son  of  Ginger  Blue," 
and  try  a  little  travel,  to  the  great  scandal  of  souls  in  her  native  borough,  who 
found  no  reason  why  Miss  Moggaridge  should  want  to  see  any  more  of  the 
world  than  that  borough  presented  to  her,  and  never  shared  her  weak  and 
wicked  desire  to  see  what  sort  of  region  it  was  that  lay  on  the  other  side  of  the 
bay  and  the  breakers. 

"The  idea,  Ann!"  said  Miss  Keturah  Meteyard,  a  well-to-do  spinster 
whose  farm  and  stock,  and  consequently  whose  opinion,  were  the  pride  of  the 
place — "the  idea  of  your  beginning  at  your  time  of  life  to  kite  round  like  a 
young  girl.  The  eyes  of  the  fool  are  in  the  ends  of  the  earth,"  quoted  Miss 
Keturah,  with  a  long  sigh.  "For  my  part,  the  village  is  good  enough  for 
me!" 

"And  for  me  too,  Kitty,"  said  Miss  Moggaridge.  "I  am  not  going  any 
great  distance;  I — I  am  going  to  see  Jack." 

Now  Jack  was  the  scapegrace  Moggaridge,  who  had  run  away  to  sea  and 
therewith  to  the  bad ;  and  the  stern  clergyman,  his  father,  having  satisfied 
his  mind  on  the  point  that  there  was  no  earthly  reclamation  possible  for  Jack, 
had  with  true,  old-style  rigor  commenced  and  carried  on  the  difficult  work  of 
tearing  the  boy  out  of  his  heart,  that  since  Heaven  had  elected  Jack  to  damna- 
tion there  might  be  no  carnal  opposition  on  his  own  part  through  the  weak 
bonds  of  the  flesh;  and  Jack's  name  had  not  been  spoken  in  that  house  from 
which  he  fled  for  many  a  year  before  the  old  man  was  gathered  to  his  fathers. 
For  all  that,  every  now  and  then  a  letter  came  to  Miss  Ann  and  another  went 
from  her  in  reply,  and  her  father,  with  an  inconsistency  very  mortifying  but 
highly  human,  saw  them  come  and  saw  them  go,  convinced  that  he  should 
hear  from  Ann  whatever  news  need  might  be  for  him  to  hear;  and  so  it  came 
to  pass  that  Miss  Ann  knew  of  Jack's  whereabouts,  and  that  Miss  Keturah, 
hearing  her  intent  of  seeking  them — Miss  Keturah  with  one  eye  on  the  com- 
munity and  one  on  her  old  pastor — held  up  her  hands  a  brief  instant  in  holy 
horror  before  memory  twitched  them  down  again. 

'Ann!"  said  she,  solemnly — "Ann,  do  you  know  what  you  are 
doing?" 

"Doing?"  said  Miss  Moggaridge.  "In  going  to  see  Jack,  do  you  mean? 
Certainly  I  do.  A  Christian  duty." 

"And  what,"  said  Miss  Keturah — "what  constitutes   you  a  better  judge 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


73 


of  Christian  duty  than  your  sainted  father,  a  Christian  minister  for  fifty  years 
breaking  the  bread  of  life  in  this  parish?" 

"Very  well,"  said  Miss  Moggaridge,  unable  to  answer  such  an  argument 
as  that — for  Miss  Keturah  fought  like  those  armies  that  put  their  prisoners  in 
the  front,  so  that  a  shot  from  Miss  Moggaridge  must  necessarily  have  demol- 
ished her  father  the  clergyman — "very  well,"  said  his  faithful  daughter, 
"perhaps  not  a  Christian  duty,  we  will  say  not;  but,  at  any  rate,  a  natural 
duty." 

"And  you  dare  to  set  a  natural  duty,  a  duty  of  our  unregenerate  condi- 
tion, above  the  duties  of  such  as  are  set  apart  from  the  world?" 

"My  dear  Kitty,"  said  Miss  Moggaridge,  "I  am  not  sure  that  we  ever 
are  or  ever  should  be  set  apart  from  the  world ;  that  we  are  not  placed  here  to 
work  in  it  and  with  it  till  our  faith  and  our  example  leaven  it." 

"Ann  Moggaridge!"  said  the  other,  springing  to  her  feet,  with  a  lively 
scarlet  in  her  yellow  face,  a  color  less  Christian  perhaps  than  that  of  her  re- 
marks, "this  is  rank  heresy,  and  I  won't  stay  to  hear  it!" 

"O  pooh,  Kitty,"  said  Miss  Moggaridge,  listening  to  the  denunciation  of 
her  opinions  with  great  good-humor,  "we've  gone  all  through  that  a  hundred 
times.  Sit  down  again — we'll  leave  argument  to  the  elders — I  want  to  talk 
about  something  else. 

"Something  else?"  with  a  change  as  easy  as  Harlequin's. 

"Yes,  I  want  to  talk  to  you  about  that  corner  meadow.  It  just  takes  a 
jog  out  ot  your  land,  and  I've  an  idea  you'd  like  to  buy  it.  Now  say  so, 
freely,  if  you  would." 

"Humph!  what  has  put  that  into  your  head,  I'd  like  to  know?  You've 
refused  a  good  price  for  it,  you  and  your  father,  every  spring  for  ten  years,  to 
my  knowledge.  You  want,"  said  Miss  Keturah,  facing  about  with  uplifted 
forefinger  like  an  accusing  angel — in  curl-papers  and  brown  gingham — "you 
want  the  ready  money  to  go  and  see  Jack  with!  ' 

"Well,  yes.  I  don't  need  the  meadow  and  I  do  need  the  money;  for 
when  you  have  everything  tied  up  in  stocks,  you  can't  always  get  at  it,  you 
know." 

"That's  very  shiftless  of  you,  Ann  Moggaridge,"  said  Miss  Keturah. 
"When  the  money's  gone,  it's  gone,  but  there  the  meadow'll  always  be." 

'Bless  your  heart,  for  the  matter  of  that,  I've  made  up  my  mind  to  get 
rid  of  all  the  farm."' 

"Get  rid  of  the  farm!' 

"Yes.  I'm  not  well  enough  nor  strong  enough  to  carry  it  on  by  m3Tself, 
now  father's  gone,  and  his  means  are  divided.  Your  place  would  make  me 
blush  like  a  fever  beside  it.  No,  I  couldn't  keep  it  to  advantage;  so  I  think 


74  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

I  shall  let  you  take  the  corner  meadow,  if  you  want  it,  and  Squire  Purcell  will 
take  the  rest." 

"And  what  will  you  do  with  yourself  when  you  come  back  from — from 
Jack,  if  you  really  mean  to  go?" 

"O,  board  with  the  Squire  or  anywhere;  the  Lord  will  provide  a  place; 
perhaps  with  you,"  added  Miss  Moggaridge,  archly. 

"No,  indeed,"  said  Miss  Keturah,  "not  with  me!  We  never  should  have 
any  peace  of  our  lives.  There  isn't  a  point  in  all  the  Westminster  Catechism 
that  we  don't  differ  about,  and  we  should  quarrel  as  to  means  of  grace  at 
every  meal  we  sat  down  to.  Besides  which,  you  would  fret  me  to  death  with 
your  obstinacy  when  you  are  notoriously  wrong — as  in  this  visit  to  Jack,  for 
instance." 

"Jack  needs  me,  Kitty.     I  must  go  to  him." 

"It  is  your  spiritual  pride  that  must  go  and  play  the  good  Samaritan!" 

"Jack  and  I  used  to  be  the  dearest  things  in  the  world  to  each  other  when 
we  were  children,  you  know,"  said  Miss  Ann,  gently.  "We  had  both  our 
pleasures  and  our  punishments  together.  The  severity  of  our  home  drove 
him  off — I  don't  know  what  it  drove  him  to.  I  waited,  because  father  claimed 
my  first  duty;  now,  I  must  do  what  can  be  done  to  help  Jack  into  the  narrow 
path  again. ' 

"The  severity  of  your  home!"  said  Miss  Keturah,  who  had  heard  nothing 
since  that;  "of  such  a  home  as  yours,  such  a  Christian  home,  with — 
with"- 

"The  benefit  of  clergy,"  laughed  Miss  Moggaridge. 

"Ann,  you're  impious!"  exclaimed  Miss  Keturah,  bringing  down  her  um- 
•brella  hard  enough  to  blunt  its  ferule.  "Much  such  a  spirit  as  that  will  do  to 
bring  Jack  back!  It  isn't  your  place  to  bring  him  back,  either.  You've  had 
no  call  to  be  a  missionary,  and  it's  presumption  in  you  to  interfere  with  the 
plain  will  of  Providence.  You  will  go  your  own  gait,  of  course,  but  you  sha'n't 
go  without  knowing  that  I  and  every  friend  you  have  disapprove  of  the  pro- 
ceeding. And  it's  another  step  to  total  beggary,  for  the  upshot  of  it  all  will 
be  that  Jack  coaxes  and  wheedles  your  money." 

"My  money?"  said  Miss  Ann.  "There  will  be  no  need  of  any  coaxing 
and  wheedling;  it's  as  much  his  as  mine." 

"His!" 

"I  know  father  expected  me  to  do  justice,  and  so  he  didn't  trouble  him- 
self. I  should  feel  I  was  wronging  him  in  his  grave  if  I  refused." 

"And  what  is  Luke  going  to  do,  may  I  ask?"  inquired  Miss  Keturah, 
with  grim  stolidit} 

"Because  Luke  won't  give  up  any  of  his,  is  no  reason  why  I  shouldn't." 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  75 

"Luke  won't?  That's  like  him.  Sensible.  Sensible1  He  won't  give 
the  Lord's  substance  to  the  ungodly." 

"So  he   says.     But    I  m   atraid  not  to  the  godly,  either.     I'm  afraid  he 
wouldn't  even  to  me  if  1  stood  in  want,  though  perhaps  1  oughtn  t  to  say  so." 
'Not  it  you'd  wasted  all  you  have  on  Jack,  certainly." 

"1  shall  divide  my  property  with  Jack  as  a  measure  of  simple  Justice, 
Kitty, ' '  said  Miss  Moggaridge,  firmly  "  It  is  as  much  his  as  mine,  as  1  said. " 

"And  when  it  s  all  gone,15  continued  Miss  Keturah,  "what  is  to  become 
of  you  then?" 

"When  it's  all  gone?     O,  there's  no  danger  of  that." 

'There's  danger  of  anything  between  your  butter-fingers,  Ann.  So  if  it 
should  happen,  what  then?" 

"The  Lord  will  provide,"  said  Miss  Ann,  sweetly. 

"The  Lord  "helps  them  that  help  themselves,"  said  Miss  Keturah.  "Well, 
I'm  gone.  I'd  wrestle  longer  with  you  if  !t  was  any  use — you're  as  set  as 
Lot's  wife.  I  suppose,"  she  said,  turning  round  after  she  had  reached  the 
door,  "youTI  come  and  see  me  before  you  go.  I've — I've  something  you 
might  take  Jack;  you  know  T  ve  been  knitting  socks  all  the  year  and  we've  no 
men-folks,'"'  and  then  she  was  gone. 

Poor  Miss  Keturah — a  good  soul  after  her  own  fashion,  which  was  not 
Miss  Moggaridge  s  fashion — once  she  had  expected  the  wicked  Jack  to  come 
home  trom  sea  and  marry  her;  and  the  expectation  and  the  disappointment 
together  had  knit  a  bond  between  her  and  his  sister  that  endured  a  great  deal 
ot  stretching  and  striving.  The  neighbors  said  that  she  had  pious  spells;  but 
if  that  were  so,  certainly  these  spells  were  sometimes  so  protracted  as  almost 
to  become  chronic,  and  in  fact  frequently  to  assume  the  complexion  of  a  com- 
plaint; but  they  never  hindered  her  from  driving  a  bargain  home  to  the  head, 
from  putting  royal  exactions  on  the  produce  of  her  dairy,  from  sending  her 
small  eggs  to  market,  and  from  disputing  every  bill,  from  the  tax- man's  to  the 
tithes,  that  ever  was  presented  at  her  door.  But  somewhere  down  under  that 
crust  of  hers  there  was  a  drop  of  honey  to  reward  the  adventurous  seeker,  and 
Miss  Ann  always  declared  that  she  knew  where  to  find  it. 

So  Miss  Moggaridge  went  away  from  the  seacoast  tor  some  seasons,  and 
the  tides  ebbed  and  flowed,  and  the  moons  waxed  and  waned,  and  the  years 
slipped  off  after  each  other,  and  the  villagers  found  other  matter  for  their 
gossip;  and  the  most  of  them  had  rather  forgotten  her,  when  some  half  dozen 
years  later  she  returned,  quite  old  and  worn  and  sad,  having  buried  tlie 
wretched  Jack,  and  a  goodly  portion  of  her  modest  fortune  with  him.  and 
bringing  back  nothing  but  his  dog  as  a  souvenir  of  his  existence — a  poor  little 
shivering  hound  that  in  no  wise  met  the  public  approbation. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


A    LETTER    CAME    TO    MISS    ANN. 


But  Miss  Moggaridge  did  not  long  allow  her  old  acquaintance?  to  remain 
unaware  of  her  return  among  them.  The  very  day  after  her  arrival  a  disas- 
trous fire  in  the  village  had  left  a  family  destitute  and  shelterless;  and,  head- 
ing a  subscription  list  with  a  moderate  sum,  she  went  round  with  it  in  person, 
as  she  had  been  wont  to  do  in  the  old  times,  till  the  sight  of  her  approaching 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  77 

shadow  had  caused  the  stingy  man  to  flee.  And  now,  with  every  rebuff  she 
met,  every  complaint  of  hard  times,  bad  bargains,  poor  crops,  she  altered  the 
figures  against  her  own  name  for  those  of  a  larger  amount,  till  by  night-fall 
the  forlorn  family  had  the  means  of  being  comfortable  again,  through  the 
goodness  of  the  village  and  Miss  Moggaridge;  for  had  not  the  village  given 
the  cipher,  whatever  might  be  the  other  figures  which  Miss  Moggaridge  had 
of  herself  prefixed  thereto  ?  True  to  her  instincts,  Miss  Keturah  Meteyard 
waylaid  her  old  friend  next  day.  "I've  heard  all  aboutit,  Ann,  soyouneedn't 
pretend  ignorance,"  she  began.  "And  you  may  think  it  very  fine,  but  I  call 
it  totally  unprincipled.  Are  you  Croesus,  or  Rothschild,  or  the  Queen  of  Sheba 
come  again,  to  be  running  to  the  relief  of  all  the  lazy  and  shiftless  folks  in 
the  country?  Everybody  is  talking  about  it;  everybody's  wondering  at  you, 
Ann!" 

"Everybody  may  reimburse, me,  Kitty,  just  as  soon  as  they  please." 
'Perhaps  they  will,  when  they're  angels.     The  idea  of  your"- 
'But,  Kitty,  I  couldn't  see  those  poor  Morrises  without  a  roof  over  them; 
and  if   you  want  the  truth,"  said  Miss  Moggaridge,  turning  like  the  trodden 
worm,  "I  can't  imagine  how  you  could.  Why,  where  on  earth  could  they  go?" 

"There  was  no  need  of  seeing  them  without  a  roof.  The  neighbors'd  have 
taken  them  in  till  they  rebuilt  the  place.  Perhaps  that  would  have  spurred 
Morris  up  enough  to  make  an  exertion,  which  he  never  did  in  his  life.  If  he'd 
been  one  atom  forehanded,  he'd  have  had  something  laid  by  in  bank  to  fall 
back  on  at  such  a  time.  I  declare,  I've  no  patience!"  cried  Miss  Keturah,  with 
nobody  to  dispute  her.  And  any  one  would  be  glad  of  those  two  girls  as 
help, "  she  continued.  "Great  lazy,  hulking,  fine  ladies  they  are !•  And  the 
first  thing  they'll  do  with  your  money  will  be  to  buy  an  ingrain  carpet  and  a 
looking-glass  and  a  couple  of  silk  gowns,  whether  there's  enough  left  for  a 
broom  and  a  dish-cloth  or  not.  Go?"  cried  Miss  Keturah,  now  quite  at  tne 
climax  of  her  virtuous  indignation.  "They  could  go  to  the  poorhouse,  where 
you'll  go  if  some  of  your  friends  don't  take  you  in  hand  and  have  a  guardian 
appointed  over  you!" 

But  Miss  Moggaridge  only  laughed  ana  kissed  her  censor  good  by,  and 
made  up  her  mind  to  save  the  sum  of  her  prodigality  out  of  her  own  expenses 
in  some  way ;  by  giving  up  her  nice  boarding-place,  perhaps,  and  boarding 
herself  in  two  or  three  rooms  of  a  house  she  still  owned,  where  she  could  go 
without  groceries  and  goodies,  for  instance,  in  such  things  as  fruit  and  sugar 
and  butter  and  eggs  and  all  the  dainties  to  be  concocted  therewith;  for  bread 
and  meat  and  milk  would  keep  body  and  soul  together  healthily,  she  reasoned, 
and  acted  on  her  reasoning.  But  instead  of  making  good,  by  this  economy, 
the  sum  she  had  extracted  from  her  hoard,  she  presently  found  that  the  sav- 


78  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

ing  thus  accomplished  had  been  used  upon  the  outfit  of  a  poor  young  minister 
going  to  preach  to  the  Queen  of  Madagascar.  Miss  Keturah  was  not  so  loud 
in  her  disapproval  of  this  as  of  some  of  Miss  Moggaridge's  other  less  eccen- 
tric charities;  but  as  giving  away  in  any  shape  was  not  agreeable  to  her,  she 
could  not  help  remarking  that,  if  she  were  Miss  Moggaridge,  she  should  feel 
as  if  she  had  lent  a  hand  to  help  cast  him  into  a  fiery  furnace,  for  that  would 
undoubtedly  be  the  final  disposition  of  the  unfortunate  young  minister  by  the 
wicked  savages  of  the  island  whither  he  was  bound.  She  herself  only  bestowed 
upon  him  some  of  her  knitted  socks  to  walk  the  furnace  in.  What  she  did 
cavil  at  much  more  was  the  discovery  that  Miss  Moggaridge  was  living  alone. 
"Without  help,  Ann  Moggaridge! "she  said,  laying  her  hands  along  her  knees 
\n  an  attitude  of  fine  Egyptian  despair.  "And  pinching  yourself  to  the  last 
extremity,  I'll  be  bound,  for  these  Morrises  and  young  ministers  and  what 
not '  What  would  your  father  say  to  see  it  ?  And  if  you  should  be  sick  in 
the  middle  of  the  night  and  no  one  near  to  hear  you  call" 

"The  Lord'll  provide  for  me,  Kitty,"  said  Miss  Moggaridge,  for  the 
thousandth  time. 

"He  won't  provide  a  full-grown  servant-girl,  springing  up  out  of  noth- 
ing." 

"But  there's  no  need  of  worry,  dear,  with  such  health  as  mine." 

"It's  tempting  Providence!" 

"Tempting  Providence  to  what?' 

"Ann!"  said  Miss  Keturah,  severely,  "I  don't  understand  how  any  one  as 
good  as  you — for  you  are  good  in  spite  of  your  faults"- 

"There  is  none  good  but  One,"  Miss  Moggaridge  gently  admonished  her. 

"As  good  as  you,"  continued  Miss  Keturah,  obliviously,  "and  enjoying 
all  your  lifelong  privileges,  can  indulge  in  levity  and  so  often  go  so  near  the 
edge  of  blasphemy,  without  a  shudder." 

"Dear  Kitty,''  said  Miss  Ann,  laughing,  "we  shall  never  agree,  though 
we  love  each  other  so  much;  so  where  is  the  use?  For  my  part,  I  think  it 
blasphemy  to  suppose  Providence  could  be  tempted." 

"Ann!  Ann!"  said  Miss  Keturah,  solemnly.  "Don't  indulge  such 
thoughts.  They  will  lead  you  presently  into  doubting  the  existence  of  a  per- 
sonal Devil!  And  now, "  continued  she,  reverting  to  the  original  topic,  "I 
sha'n't  go  away  till  you  promise-me  to  take  in  help,  so  that  you  needn't  die 
alone  in  the  night,  and  be  found  stiff  in  the  morning  by  a  stranger' "  And 
poor  Miss  Moggaridge  had  to  promise,  at  last,  though  it  upset  all  her  little 
scheme  of  saving  in  groceries  and  firewood  and  wages,  and  went  to  her  heart 
sorely. 

It  was  not  very  long  after  this  expostulation  of  Miss  Keturah's  that — a 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


79 


stout-armed  serving-woman  having  been  added  to  Miss  Moggaridge's  family — 
another  more  singular  addition  made  itself  on  the  night  when  a  ship  was 
nipped  among  the  breakers  behind  which  the  town  had  intrenched  itself,  and 
went  to  pieces  just  outside  the  cove  of  stiller  water,  at  whose  head  stood  the 
house  in  which  were  Miss  Moggaridge's  rooms.  Of  all  the  freighting  lives 
on  board  that  doomed  craft,  one  thing  alone  ever  came  to  shore — a  bird,  that, 
as  Miss  Moggaridge  peered  from  the  door  which  Bridget  held  open  for  her, 
fluttered  through  the  tumultuous  twilight  air  and  into  her  arms.  Miss  Mog- 
garidge left  Bridget  to  set  her  back  to  the  door  and  push  it  inch  by  inch,  till 
one  triumphant  slam  proclaimed  victory  over  the  elements,  while  hastening 
in  herself  to  bare  her  foundling  before  the  fire.  It  was  a  parrot,  drenched 
with  the  wave  and  the  weather  in  spite  of  his  preening  oils,  shivering  in  her 
hands,  and  almost  ready  to  yield  to  firelight  and  warmth  the  remnant  of  life 
that  survived  his  battling  flight.  Miss  Moggaridge  bestowed  him  in  a  basket 
of  wool  in  a  corner  of  the  heated  hearth,  placed  milk  and  crumbs  at  hand,  and 
no  more  resumed  her  knitting -and  soft-voiced  psalm-singing,  but  fidgeted 
about  the  darkened  windows  and  wondered  concerning  the  poor  souls  who, 
since  they  never  could  make  shore  again  themselves,  had  given  the  bird  the 
liberty  of  his  wings.  She  was  attracted  again  to  the  fireside  by  a  long  whistle 
of  unspeakable  relief,  and,  turning,  saw  the  bird  stepping  from  the  basket, 
treading  daintily  down  the  tiles,  and  waddling  to  and  fro  before  the  blessed 
blaze,  while  he  chuckled  to  himself  unintelligibly,  but  quite  as  if  he  had  prac- 
ticed the  cunningest  trick  over  storm  and  shipwreck  that  could  have  been  de- 
vised. Bridget  would  have  frowned  the  intruder  down,  and  did  eventually 
give  warning  "along  of  the  divil's  imp,"  as  she  called  him  ;  but  Miss  Mogga- 
ridge was  as  pleased  as  a  child;  it  was  the  only  thing  of  the  sort  in  the  village, 
and  what  a  means  to  attract  the  little  people,  whom  she  loved,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  administer  to  them  diluted  doses  of  the  moral  law!  Had  she  chosen, 
to  be  sure,  it  would  have  been  one  of  the  great  gray  African  things  she  had 
read  of,  that  spread  a  scarlet  tail  and  seemed  the  phoenix  of  some  white- 
washed brand  in  which  the  smouldering  fire  yet  sparkles.  But  this  was  a  lit- 
tle fellow  with  scarlet  on  his  shoulders  and  his  wings,  a  golden  cap  on  his 
head,  and  it  would  have  been  hard  to  say  whether  the  glistening  mantle  over 
his  back  were  emerald  crusted  with  gold  or  gold  enameled  with  emerald,  so 
much  did  every  single  feather  shine  like  a  blade  of  green  grass  full  of  flint. 
While  she  looked,  and  admired,  and  wished,  nevertheless,  that  it  were  gray, 
another  door  was  pushed  gently  open  and  Folly  entered — Jack's  slim  white 
hound,  as  much  a  miracle  of  beauty  in  his  own  way — made  at  the  bird  with 
native  instinct,  then  paused  with  equally  native  cowardice,  and  looked  at  Miss 
Moggaridge  and  wagged  his  tail,  as  who  should  say,  "Praise  my  forbearance."" 


8o 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS 


But  the  par- 
rot,  having 
surveyed 
Master  Fol- 
ly   on    this 
side  and  on 
that  from  a 
pair  of  eyes 
like    limpid 
jewels,    op- 
ened   his 
mouth    and 
barked.  No- 
thing     else 
was  needed; 
the  p  h  a  n  - 
torn   of   the 
gray  parrot 
disappeared 
whence    he 
came;  more 
intelligence 
no    child   could  have 
shown.       Miss    Mogga- 
ridge  caught  him  up,  re- 
ceived a  vicious  bite  for  her 
'pains,    but,    notwithstanding, 
suffered  him  to  cling  upon  her 
fingers,    tightly    grasping    which, 
he  looked  down  upon  the  hound, 
flapped   his  gorgeous    wings    and 
crowed ;  then  he  went  through  an 
astonishing  series  of  barn-yard  ac- 
complishments, finally  ending  in  a 
burst  and  clatter  of  the  most  up- 
roarious and  side-splitting  laughter. 
Having  done  this,  he  had  exhaust- 
ed his   repertory,    and  never  for   all   the  time   during  which  he  delighted 
the  heart  of  Miss  Moggaridge  and  forced  Miss  Keturah  to  regard  him  as  a 
piece  of  supernatural  sin  created  by  the  Evil  One  in  mockery  of  the  crea- 


THE    SHIP    WENT    TO    PIECES. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  81 

tion  of  man,  so  that  had  she  but  been  a  good  Catholic  she  would  have  crossed 
herself  before  him,  and,  without  b.eing  an  ancient  Persian,  did  frequently  pro- 
pitiate him  after  the  fashion  of  the  Ahrimanian  worship — never  during  all 
that  time  did  he  catch  a  new  sound  or  utter  an  articulate  syllable  to  denote 
from  what  nationality — Spanish,  Portuguese,  or  Dutch — he  had  received  his 
earliest  lessons.  But  he  had  done  enough.  Folly,  never  particularly  brilliant 
in  his  wits,  and  not  more  strongly  developed  in  his  affections,  was  given 
hearth-room  on  sufferance  for  his  lissome  limbs,  and  on  general  grounds  of 
compassion  for  himself  and  Jack  together;  but  the  parrot,  luring  one  on  with 
perpetual  hopes  of  new  attainment,  and  born  of  the  tropical  sun  that  made  a 
perpetual  mirage  in  her  imagination,  became  cherished  society,  and  had  not 
only  a  shining  perch,  but  a  nest  in  Miss  Moggaridge's  affections  as  well — a 
nest  that  cost  her  dearly  some  years  afterward. 

But  before  the  town  had  much  more  than  done  wondering  at  Miss  Mog- 
garidge's parrot,  and  telling  all  the  gossipry  of  his  deeds  and  misdeeds — of 
the  way  he  picked  the  lock  of  his  cage,  walked  up  the  walls,  tearing  off  the  pa- 
pering as  he  went,  bit  big  splinters  from  the  window-blinds,  drove  away  every 
shadow  of  a  cat,  and  made  general  havoc — Miss  Moggaridge  gave  such  occa- 
sion for  a  fresh  onslaught  of  tongues,  that  the  bird  was  half  forgotten. 

It  was  when  her  name  was  found  to  have  been  indorsed  upon  her  brother 
Luke's  paper — Luke  being  the  resident  of  another  place — and  in  his  failure 
the  larger  portion  of  her  earthly  goods  was  swept  out  of  her  hands.  One 
would  have  supposed  that  Miss  Moggaridge  had  been  guilty  of  a  forgery,  and 
that  not  her  own  property,  but  the  church  funds,  had  been  made  away  with 
by  means  of  the  wretched  signature ;  and  a  particular  aggravation  of  the  ca- 
lamity, in  the  eyes  of  her  towns-people,  seemed  to  be  its  clandestine  charac- 
ter; if  they  had  been  consulted  or  had  even  been  made  aware  that  such  a 
thing  might  possibly  be  expected,  much  might  have  been  condoned.  As  it 
was,  they  were  glad,  they  were  sure,  that  she  felt  able  to  afford  such  fine 
doings,  but  they  had  heard  of  such  a  thing  as  being  just  before  you  were  gen- 
erous, and  they  only  hoped  she  wouldn't  come  upon  the  town  in  her  old  age 
in  consequence,  that  was  all ;  for  much  that  close-fisted  Luke  would  do  for 
her,  even  if  he  got  upon  his  feet  again — Luke  who  had  been  heard  to  remark 
tloat  the  loss  of  a  cent  spoiled  the  face  of  a  dollar ! 

But  Luke  never  got  upon  his  feet  again,  and  during  the  rest  of  his  lire  he 
struggled  along  from  hand  to  mouth,  with  one  child  binding  shoes  and  an- 
other in  the  mills,  a  scanty  board,  a  thread-bare  back ;  and  though  Miss  Mog- 
garidge was  left  now  with  nothing  but  a  mere  pittance  of  bank  stock  over 
and  above  the  possession  of  the  house  in  which  she  reserved  her  rooms,  yet 
out  of  the  income  thus  remaining  she  still  found  it  possible  now  and  then  to 


8a  STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 

send  a  gold-piece  to  Luke — a  gold-piece  which  in  his  eyes  looked  large  enough 
to  eclipse  the  sun,  while  she  patched  and  turned  and  furbished  many  a  worn 
old  garment  of  her  own,  in  order  that  she  might  send  a  new  one  to  her  sister- 
in-law,  of  whom  Miss  Keturah  once  declared  that  she  put  her  more  in  mind 
of  an  old  shoe-knife  worn  down  to  the  handle  than  of  anything  else  in  the 
world. 

"As  if  it  would  make  the  least  difference  in  her  appearance, "  said  Miss 
Keturah,  who  had  a  faculty  of  mousing  out  all  these  innocent  crimes  against 
society  on  Miss  Moggaridge's  part,  "whether  she  wore  calico  or  homespun? 
Dress  up  a  split  rail !  And  you  rigging  yourself  out  of  therag -bag  so  as  to 
send  her  an  alpaca.  Why  can't  she  work?  /work." 

"Bless  you,  Kitty,  doesn't  she  work  like  a  slave  now  for  the  mere  privi- 
lege of  drawing  her  breath?  What  more  can  she  do?" 

"That's  no  business  of  mine,  or  yours  either.  Your  duty, "  said  Miss 
Keturah,  "your  bounden  duty's  to  take  care  of  yourself.  And  here  you  are 
wearing  flannels  thin  as  vanity,  because  you've  no  money  left  to  buy  thick 
ones;  and  you'll  get  a  cold  and  a  cough  through  these  Luke  Moggaridges 
that'll  carry  you  out  of  the  world;  and  then,"  exclaimed  she,  with  an  unus- 
ual quaver  in  her  piercing  tone — "then  I  should  like  to  know  what  is  to  be- 
come of" 

"The  Lord  will  provide  for  me,  Kitty." 

"So  I've  heard  you  say!"  she  snapped.  "But  I  was  talking  about  my  self 
—He  won't  provide  me  with  another  Ann  Moggaridge"—  And  there  Miss 
Keturah  whisked  herself  out  of  sight,  possibly  to  prevent  any  such  catas- 
trophe as  her  friend's  seeing  a  tear  in  those  sharp  eyes  of  hers  unused  to  such 
weak  visitants. 

Yet  as  a  law  of  ethics  is  the  impossibility  of  standing  still  in  face  of  the 
necessity  of  motion,  either  progressive  or  retrograde,  so  Miss  Moggaridge 
went  on  verifying  the  worst  prognostications  of  her  neighbors;  and  it  was 
surmised  that  the  way  in  which  she  had  raised  the  money  to  pay  for  having 
the  cataract  removed  from  old  Master  Sullivan's  eyes — eyes  worn  out  in  the 
service  of  two  generations  of  the  town's  children— which  she  was  one  day 
found  to  have  done,  was  by  scrimping  her  store  of  wood  and  coal  (Bridget's 
departure  having  long  left  her  free  to  do  so),  to  that  mere  apology  for  a  fire 
the  winter  long  to  which  she  owed  a  rheumatism  that  now  began  to  afflict 
her  hands  and  feet  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make  her  nearly  useless  in  any 
physical  effort.  It  was  no  wcnder  the  townsfolk  were  incensed  against  her, 
for  her  conduct  implied  a  reproof  of  theirs  that  was  vexatious;  why  in  the 
world  couldn't  she  have  let  Master  Sullivan's  eyes  alone?  He  had  looked  out 
upon  the  world  and  had  seen  it  to  his  satisfaction  or  dissatisfaction  for  three- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  83 

> 

score  years  and  over ;  one  would  have  imagined  he  had  seen  enough  of  a 
place  whose  sins  he  was  always  bewailing! 

But  a  worse  enormity  than  almost  any  preceding  ones  remained  yet  to 
be  perpetrated  by  Miss  Moggaridge.  It  was  an  encroachment  upon  her  cap- 
ital, her  small  remaining  capital,  for  the  education  of  one  of  the  Luke  Mog- 
garidges,  a  bright  boy  whom  his  aunt  thought  to  be  possessed  of  too  much 
ability  to  rust  away  in  a  hand-to-hand  struggle  with  life.  Longing,  perhaps, 
to  hear  him  preach  some  searching  sermon  in  his  grandfather's  pulpit,  and  to 
surrender  into  safe  and  appreciative  keeping  those  barrels  full  of  sacred  man- 
uscripts which  she  still  treasured,  she  had  resolved  to  have  him  fitted  and  sent 
to  college.  Very  likely  the  town  in  which  the  boy  lived  thought  it  a  worthy 
action  of  the  aunt's,  but  the  town  in  which  he  didn't  live  regarded  it  as  a 
piece  of  Quixotism  on  a  par  with  all  her  previous  proceedings,  since  the  boy 
would  have  been  as  well  off  at  a  trade,  Miss  Moggaridge  much  better  off,  and 
the  town  plus  certain  tax  money  now  lost  to  it  forever.  It  was,  however,  re- 
served for  Miss  Keturah  to  learn  the  whole  extent  of  her  offence  before  the 
town  had  done  so — to  learn  that  she  had  not  been  spending  merely  all  her  in- 
come, dismissing  Bridget,  freezing  herself,  starving  herself,  but  she  had  been 
drawing  on  her  little  principal  till  there  was  barely  enough  to  buy  her  a 
yearly  gown  and  shoes,  and  in  order  to  live  at  all  she  must  spend  the  whole 
remainder  now,  instead  of  waiting  for  any  interest. 

"Exactly,  exactly,  exactly  what  I  prophesied!"  cried  Miss  Keturah. 
"And  who  but  you  could  contrive,  let  alone  could  have  done,  such  a  piece  of 
work  ?  You  show  ingenuity  enough  in  bringing  yourself  to  beggary  to  have 
made  your  fortune  at  a  patent.  You  have  a  talent  for  ruin!" 

"I  am  not  afraid  of  beggary,  Kitty,"  said  Miss  Moggaridge.  "How 
often  shall  I  quote  the  Psalmist  to  you?  'I  have  been  young  and  now  am  old; 
yet  have  I  not  seen  the  righteous  forsaken,  nor  his  seed  begging  bread. '  ' 

"I  know  that,  Ann.  I  say  it  over  often.  It's  the  only  thing  that  leaves 
me  any  hope  for  you."  And  Miss  Keturah  kept  a  silent  meditation  for  a  few 
moments.  "As  if  it  wasn't  just  as  well,"  she  broke  forth  at  length,  "for  that 
Luke  Moggaridge  boy  to  dig  potatoes  or  make  shoes,  as  to  preach  bad  ser- 
mons, or  kill  off  patients,  or  make  confusion  worse  confounded  in  a  lawsuit!" 

Whether  Miss  Moggaridge  thought  it  a  dreadful  world  where  every  one 
spoke  the  truth  to  his  neighbor,  or  not,  she  answered,  pleasantly ,"  Kitty,  dear, 
I  should  have  consulted  you  as  to  that" 

"As  to  what ?     Shoes  or  sermons?     He  might  have  made  good  shoes. " 

"Only,"  continued  Miss  Moggaridge,  meekly  but  determinedly— "only 
you  make  such  a  breeze  if  you  think  differently,  that  I  felt  it  best  to  get  him 
through  college  first" 


84  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

"Why  couldn't  he  get  himself  through?" 

"Well,  he's  sickly." 

*'O  dear  Lord,  as  if  there  weren't  enough  of  that  kind!  Serve  Heaven 
because  he  can't  serve  the  flesh!  Taking  dyspepsia  and  blue  devils  for  faith 
and  works!" 

"You  mustn't  now,  Kitty,  you  mustn't.  I  meant  for  us  all  to  advise  to- 
gether concerning  the  choice  ot  a  profession  after  his  graduation.  For  he  has 
real  talent,  he'll  do  us  credit." 

"Well,"  said  Miss  Keturah,  a  little  mollified,  "it  might  have  been  wise. 
It  might  have  saved  you  a  pretty  penny,  /might  have  lent  the  young  man 
the  money  he  needed,  and  it  would  have  done  him  no  harm  to  feel  that  he 
was  to  refund  it  when  he  was  able," 

"That  is  exactly  what  1  have  done,  Kitty.  And  I  never  thought  of  let- 
ting any  one  else,  even  you — though  I'd  rather  it  should  be  you  than  any  one 
— while  I  was  able.  And  I'm  sure  I  can  pinch  along  any  way  till  he  can  pay 
me.  and  if  he  never  can  pay  me,  he  can  take  care  of  me,  for  he  is  a  noble 
boy  a  noble  boy.  " 

"And  what  if  he  shouldn't  live  to  do  anytnmg  of  the  sort?" 

"O,  I  can't  think  of  such  a  thing." 

''He  mightn't,   though.     There's  many  a  hole  in  the  skimmer." 
"I  don  t  know— 1  don't  know  what  1  should  do.     But  there,  no  matter.     I 
shall  be  taken  care  of  some  way,  come  what  will.     I  always  have  been.     The 
Lord  will  provide." 

"Well  now,  Ann,  I'm  going  to  demand  one  thing  by  my  right  as  your 
next  friend,  and  one  caring  a  great  deal  more  about  you  than  all  the  Lukes 
in  the  world.  You  won  t  lend  that  boy,  noble  or  otherwise,  another  penny, 
but  you'll  let  him  keep  school  and  work  his  way  through  his  profession  him- 
self." 

"No  indeed.  Kitty'  That  would  make  jt  six  or  seven  years  before  he  got 
his  profession.  There  are  only  a  few  hundreds  left,  so  they  may  as  well  go 
with  the  others." 

"Light  come,  light  go,"'  sniffed  Miss  Keturah.  "If  you'd  had  to  work 
for  that  money What.  I  repeat,  what  in  the  mean  time  is  to  become  of  you  ?" 

"Don't  fear  for  me.  the  Lord  will  provide." 

"The  pooihouse  will,  you  mean!  Why  in  the  name  of  wonder  can't  he 
work  his  way  up.  as  well  as  his  betters f" 

'Well,  the  truth  is.  Kitty,  he's— he's  engaged.  And  of  course  he  wants 
to  be  married  And" 

But  Miss  Keturah  had  risen  from  her  chair  and  stalked  out,  and  slammed 
the  door  behind  her.  without  another  syllable. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  85 

Poor  Miss  Moggaridge.  It  was  but  little  more  than  a  twelvemonth  after 
this  conversation  that  her  noble  boy  was  drowned  while  bathing;  and  half 
broken-hearted — for  she  had  grown  very  fond  of  him  through  his  constant  let- 
ters and  occasional  visits — she  never  called  to  mind  how  her  money,  princi- 
pal and  interest  and  education,  had  gone  down  with  him  and  left  her  abso- 
lutely penniless,  save  for  the  rent  of  the  residue  of  the  house  where  she  kept 
her  two  or  three  rooms.  But  Miss  Keturah  did. 

Miss  Moggaridge  was  now,  moreover,  quite  unable  to  do  a  thing  to  help 
herself.  Far  too  lame  in  her  feet  to  walk  and  in  her  hands  to  knit,  she  was 
obliged  to  sit  all  day  in  her  chair  doing  nothing,  and  have  her  meals  brought 
to  her  by  the  family,  and  her  rooms  kept  in  order,  in  payment  of  the  rent, 
while  her  time  was  enlivened  only  by  the  children  who  dropped  in  to  see  the 
parrot — an  entertainment  ever  new ;  by  a  weekly  afternoon  of  Mrs.  Morris', 
who  came  and  did  up  all  the  little  odd  jobs  of  mending  on  which  she  could 
lay  her  willing  hands;  by  the  calls  of  Master  Sullivan,  glowering  at  the  world 
out  of  a  pair  of  immense  spectacles,  through  which  he  read  daily  chapters  of 
the  Psalms  to  her;  and  by  the  half -loving,  half-quarreling  visits  of  Miss  Ke- 
turah. She  used  to  congratulate  herself  in  those  days  over  the  possession  of 
the  parrot.  "I  should  forget  my  tongue  if  I  hadn't  him  and  the  hound  to  talk 
with/'  she  used  to  say,  in  answer  to  Miss  Keturah's  complaints  of  the  screech- 
ing with  which  the  bird  always  greeted  her.  "He  is  a  capital  companion. 
When  I  see  him  so  gay  and  good-natured,  imprisoned  in  his  cage  with  none 
of  his  kind  near,  I  wonder  at  myself  for  repining  over  my  confinement  in  so 
large  and  airy  a  room  as  this,  where  I  can  look  out  on  the  sea  all  day  long." 
And  she  bent  her  head  down  for  the  bird  to  caress,  and  loved  him  none  the 
less  on  the  next  day — when  Miss  Keturah  would  have  been  glad  to  wring  his 
neck — for  the  crowning  disaster  of  her  life,  which  he  brought  about  that  very 
evening.  jr 

For  the  mischievous  fellow,  working  open  the  door  of  his  cage,  as  he  had 
done  a  thousand  times  before,  while  Miss  Moggaridge  sat  nodding  in  her 
chair,  had  clambered  with  bill  and  claw  here  and  there  about  the  room,  calling 
in  the  aid  of  his  splendid  wings  when  need  was,  till,  reaching  a  match-safe 
and  securing  a  card  of  matches  in  his  bill  with  which  he  made  off,  pausing 
only  on  the  top  of  a  pile  of  religious  newspapers,  on  a  table  beneath  the  chintz 
window-curtains,  to  pull  them  into  a  multitude  of  splinters;  and  the  conse- 
quence was  that  presently  his  frightened  screams  woke  the  helpless  Miss  Mog- 
garidge to  a  dim,  hall -suffocated  sense  that  the  world  was  full  of  smoke,  and 
to  find  the  place  in  flames,  and  the  neighbors  rushing  in  and  carrying  her, 
and  the  parrot  clinging  to  her,  to  a  place  of  safety,  upon  which  Miss  Keturah 
swooped  down  directly  and  had  her  removed  to  her  own  house  and  installed  in 


86  STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 

the  bedroom  adjoining  the  best-room,  without  asking  her  so  much  as  whether 
she  would  or  no. 

"Well,  Ann,"  said  Miss  Keturah,  rising  from  her  knees  after  their  even- 
ing prayers,  "it's  the  most  wonderful  deliverance  I  ever  heard  anything 
about" 

'It  is  indeed,"  sobbed  the  poor  lady,  still  quivering  with  her  excitement. 
"And,  under  Heaven,  I  may  thank  Poll  for  it,"  she  said,  looking  kindly  at 
the  crestfallen  bird  on  the  chair's  arm,  whose  screams  had  alarmed  the  neigh- 
bors. 

"Indeed  you  may!"  the  old  Adam  coming  uppermost  again— strange  they 
never  called  it  the  old  Eve — "indeed  you  may — thank  him  for  any  mischief— 
picking  out  a  baby's  eyes  or  setting  a  house  afire,  it's  all  one  to  him.  But 
there's  no  great  loss  without  some  small  gain;  and  there's  one  thing  in  it  I'm 
truly  grateful  for,  you  can't  waste  any  more  money,  Ann  Moggaridge,  for  you 
haven't  got  any  more  to  waste!" 

"Why,  Kitty,  there's  the  land  the  house  stood  on,  that  will  bring  some- 
thing"— profoundly  of  the  conviction  that  her  possession  was  the  widow's 
cruse,  and  with  no  idea  of  ever  taking  offence  at  anything  that  Miss  Keturah 
said. 

"Yes,  something.  But  you'll  never  have  it,"  said  Miss  Keturah,  grimly. 
"For  I'm  going  to  buy  that  land  myself,  and  never  pay  you  a  cent  for  it;  so 
you  can't  give  that  away!  And  now  you're  here,  I'm  going  to  keep  you,  Ann; 
for  you're  no  more  fit  to  be  trusted  with  yourself  than  a  baby.  And  I  shall 
see  that  you  have  respectable  gowns  and  thick  flannels  and  warm  stockings 
and  the  doctor.  You'll  have  this  room,  and  I  the  one  on  the  other  side  that 
I've  always  had;  and  we'll  have  your  chair  wheeled  out  in  the  daytimes;  and 
I  think  we  shall  get  along  very  well  together  for  the  rest  of  our  lives,  if  you're 
not  as  obstinate  and  unreasonable" 

"O  Kitty,"  said  Miss  Moggaridge,  looking  up  with  streaming  eyes  that 
showed  how  great,  although  unspoken,  her  anxiety  had  become,  and  how  great 
the  relief  from  that  dread  of  public  alms  which  we  all  share  alike — "O  Kitty! 
I  had  just  as  lief  have  everything  from  you  as  not.  I  had  rather 
owe" 

"There's  no  owing  in  the  case!"  said  Miss  Keturah,  tossing  her  head, 
to  the  infinite  danger  of  the  kerosene  from  the  whirlwind  made  by  her 
ribbons. 

"O,  there  is!  there  is!"  sobbed  Miss  Moggaridge.  "Debts,  too,  I  never 
can  pay!  You've  always  stood  my  next  best  friend  to  Heaven,  dear;  and 
didn't  I  say,"  she  cried,  with  a  smile  breaking  like  sunshine  through  her  tears 
— "didn't  I  say  the  Lord  would  provide?" 


;vA 


BONDS  OF  BLOOD  RELATIONSHIP. 


(87) 


88  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


CHAPTER  FOURTH. 


A  Family  Tree. 

And  hie  him  home  at  evening's  close 
To  sweet  repast  and  calm  repose. 

— Gray. 

He  that  hath  a  house  to  put's  head  in  has  a  good  head-piece. 

— Shakespeare. 

She  is  my  home, 
My  household  stuff,  my  field,  my  barn. 

— Shakespeare. 

From  our  own  selves  our  joys  must  flow 
And  that  dear  hut  our  home. 

— Nathaniel  Cotton. 

Who  hath  a  family 
Stands  not  alone, 
Buttressed  by  clansmen, 
Holpen  by  bannermen, 
Battle  all  merrily 
Many  as  one. 

— Old  Song. 

Such  is  the  patriot's  boast,  where'er  we  roam, 
His  first  best  country  ever  is  at  home. 

— Goldsmith. 

When  one  has  made  up  one's  mind  to  live  in  the  present  and  to  find  a 
great  joy  in  expectancy,  that  is  to  foster  a  sunny  disposition  and  cease  re- 
gretting the  past,  and  when  one  is  entrenched  in  a  firm  self-respect,  one  turns 
first  for  happiness  to  the  family  relation.  God  setteth  the  solitary  in  families 
is  a  text  that  we  all  receive  with  grateful  hearts,  and  the  more  so  the  older  we 
grow.  The  homely  saying  that  blood  is  thicker  than  water  is  one  of  the 
truths  that  it  is  usually  held  there  is  no  gainsaying,  and  it  is  believed  that  it 
contains,  as  many  another  law  does,  the  concentrated  wisdom  of  years.  Yet 
we  have  always  doubted  if,  after  all,  it  were  natural  feeling  that  predominated 
among  us  so  much  as  family  feeling,  if  one  can  discriminate  between  the  two ; 
for  natural  feeling  is  shared  with  brutes  and  savages,  but  the  other  belongs 


STEPPING    vSTONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


89 


THE    SAME    MOTHER  S    KNEE. 


truly  to  those  that  are  bound  in  the  bonds  of  blood-relationship.  The  brute 
shows  none  of  it,  except  in  relation  to  the  mate,  and  not  always  then,  and  for 
a  very  brief  season  to  the  offspring. 

The  love  of  brothers  and  sisters,  of  grandparents  and  cousins,  does  not 
distinguish  savages,  many  of  whom  are  known  to  leave  their  old  and  sick  to 
lonely  and  speedy  death  But  the  moment  that  civilization  advances  at  all, 
families  and  clans  become  established,  the  blood  that  flows  in  kindred  veins 


90  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

begins  to  be  recognized  and  felt.  Some  of  this  sentiment  might  possibly  be 
traced  to  the  sense  of  possession,  for  although  we  do  not  reason  it  out  in  cor- 
responding words,  we  are  aware  of  it— perhaps  through  those  dark  senses  that 
are  to  the  others  what  the  dark  rays  of  the  spectrum  are  to  the  seven  colors— 
these  people  are  ours,  are  in  some  degree  a  part  of  ourselves,  certainly  of  our 
lives;  their  conduct  is  an  honor  or  a  dishonor  to  us;  we  are  forced  to  think 
of  them,  and  it  flatters  our  self-love  to  think  well  of  them ;  what  they  are  it  is 
possible  that  we,  of  the  same  descent,  may  be  also,  and  this  little  thread  of 
pride  feels  a  pull  at  the  third  generation 


Household  Associations 

But  cannot  much  more  of  the  sentiment  be  traced  to  association  ?  There 
must  be  ties,  equal  to  those  of  blood,  in  life  from  the  earliest  remembrance 
about  the  same  hearth  and  at  the  same  mother's  knee — that  mother  who  re- 
mains sacred,  we  will  not  say  either  because  of  instinct  or  because  of  the  re- 
sult of  long  teaching,  but  because  she  bore  us.  And  while  we  are  a  portion 
of  the  flesh  and  blood  of  our  parents,  and  love  is  thus  compelled,  they  would 
be  strange  beings  if  we  might  not  also  love  them  for  themselves.  But 
whether  or  not,  we  see  that  there  is  no  time,  in  all  that  season  when  emo- 
tions are  fresh  and  character  is  forming,  in  which  the  others  of  the  family  are 
not  integral  and  inherent  portions,  and  again  through  our  very  love  of  self 
they  are  dear  to  us. 

But  whether  this  family  feeling  is,  in  its  essentials,  a  God-given  instinct 
or  a  matter  of  growth  and  education,  it  is  at  the  foundation  of  all  our  civil 
polity,  and  the  family  is  at  the  base  of  the  town,  as  the  town  is  at  the  base 
of  the  State ;  and  so  long  as  the  family  relation  is  kept  pure  and  undefiled 
among  any  people,  so  long  as  children  honor  their  parents,  as  parents  bear 
in  mtnd  their  responsibility  concerning  those  whom  they  have  brought  into 
the  world,  as  the  hearts  of  brothers  and  sisters  beat  as  one,  so  long  will  that 
people  possess  shields  and  safeguards  against  enemies  in  having  homes  and 
altar-fires  worth  fighting  tor. 

There  are  few  things  more  beautiful  to  see  than  this  family  affection,  the 
solicitude  of  the  old  for  the  young,  the  reverence  of  the  young  for  the  old, 
the  gentle  ties  of  affiliation  between  sister  and  sister,  the  noble  loyalty  of 
brother  fcr  brother,  the  attention  to  trifles  that  makes  happiness  for  one  an- 
other, the  deadening  of  strife  and  destruction  of  envy,  the  mutual  aiding  and 
uplifting. 


REVERENCE  OF  THE  YOUNG  FOR  THE  OLD. 


92  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

Plutarch's  Advice. 

Something  of  this  was  known  to  Plutarch,  who  advises  his  readers  to  imi- 
tate one  who,  "when  he  knows  himself  far  superior  to  his  brother,  calls  for 
his  help  and  advice,  whether  it  be  the  business  of  a  rhetorician,  a  magistrate, 
or  a  friend ;  in  a  word,  he  that  neglects  or  leaves  him  out  in  no  honorable  em- 
ployment or  concern,  but  joins  him  with  himself  in  all  his  noble  and  worthy 
actions,  employs  him  when  present,  waits  for  him  when  absent,  and  makes 
the  world  take  notice  that  he  is  as  fit  for  business  as  himself,  but  of  a  more 
modest  and  yielding  disposition,  and  all  this  while  he  has  done  himself  no 
wrong,  and  has  bravely  advanced  his  brother."  This  same  old  heathen  au- 
thor, indeed,  who  speaks  so  commendably  of  brotherly  honor  and  help,  has  a 
great  deal  more  to  say  in  the  same  vein,  which  makes  one  see  that  fine  family 
feeling,  if  not  universal  with  the  ancients,  was  yet  by  no  means  confined  to 
our  later  day;  and  one  can  not  but  be  struck  at  the  advice  he  gives  a  young 
man  in  relation  to  a  married  brother,  adjuring  him, to  "have  the  highest  es- 
teem and  honor  for  his  brother's  wife,  respecting  and  honoring  her  as  the 
most  sacred  of  all  his  brother's  sacred  treasures,  and  thus  to  do  honor  to  him ; 
condoling  with  her  when  she  is  neglected,  and  appeasing  her  when  she  is  aii- 
gercd ;  if  she  have  a  little  offended,  to  intercede  and  sue  for  her  peace ;  if 
there  have  been  any  private  difference  between  himself  and  his  brother,  to 

make  his  complaint  before  her  in  order  to  reconcilement When  he  has 

children,  let  him  express  his  affection  and  respect  to  both  parents  with  the 
greater  ardency.  Let  him  love  the  children  equally  with  his  own,  but  be 
more  favorable  and  indulgent  to  them,  that,  if  it  chance  that  they  commit 
some  of  their  youthful  faults,  they  may  not  run  away  and  hide  themselves 
among  naughty  acquaintances  through  fear  of  their  parents'  anger,  but  may 
have  in  their  uncle  a  recourse  and  refuge  where  they  will  be  admonished  lov- 
ingly, and  will  find  an  intercessor  to  make  their  excuse  and  get  their  pardon." 

If  all  this  were  in  accordance  with  advice  and  custom  among  the  best  in 
heathen  times,  how  much  further  should  fraternal  feeling  go  now,  led  along 
in  the  gentle  paths  of  Christianity!  Yet  although  great  things  are  some- 
times more  easily  done  than  small  ones,  we  doubt  if  there  are,  in  our  own 
virtuous  days,  any  better  instances  of  brotherly  love  than  that  between  two 
Eastern  brothers  whose  dust  has  for  thousands  of  years  been  a  portion  of  the 
common  earth,  "in  a  question,"  to  quote  our  good  old  Plutarch  again,  "not 
concerning  a  little  patch  of  land,  nor  a  few  servants  or  cattle,  but  no  less  than 
the  kingdom  of  Persia.  When  Darius  was  dead,  some  were  for  Ariamenes' 
succeeding  to  the  crown,  as  being  eldest  son ;  others  were  for  Xerxes,  who 
was  born  to  Darius  of  Atossa,  the  daughter  of  Cyrus,  in  the  time  of  his  reign 


/"•w      imf/mmmi/^/,mfmmMmKmm^mmmeiimmm^  * 

THE  STIFF,   PRIM  LIKENESS  OF  SOME  GRANDAM.  (93) 


94  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

over  Persia.  Ariamencs,  therefore,  came  from  Media,  in  no  hostile  posture, 
but  very  peaceably,  to  hear  the  matter  determined.  Xerxes,  being  there, 
used  the  majesty  and  power  of  a  king.  But  when  his  brother  was  come  he 
laid  down  his  crown  and  other  royal  ornaments,  went  and,  meeting,  greeted 
him.  And  sending  him  presents,  he  gave  a  charge  to  his  servants  to  deliver 
them  with  these  words:  'With  these  presents  your  brother  Xerxes  expresses 
the  honor  he  has  for  you ;  and  if  by  the  judgment  and  suffrages  of  the  Per- 
sians I  be  declared  king,  I  place  you  next  to  myself. '  Ariamenes  replied  : 
'  I  accept  your  gifts,  but  presume  the  kingdom  of  Persia  to  be  my  right. 
Yet  for  all  my  younger  brethren  I  shall  have  an  honor,  but  for  Xerxes  in  the 
first  place. '  The  day  of  determining  who  should  reign  being  come,  the  Per- 
sians made  Artabanus,  brother  to  Darius,  judge.  Xerxes  excepting  against 
him.  confiding  most  in  the  multitude,  his  mother,  Atossa,  reproved  him,  say- 
ing: 'Why,  son,  are  you  so  shy  of  Artabanus,  your  uncle,  and  one  of  the 
best  men  among  the  Persians  ?  And  why  should  you  dread  the  trial  where 
the  worst  you  can  fear  is  to  be  next  the  throne,  and  to  be  called  the  King  of 
Persia's  brother?'  Xerxes,  at  length  submitting,  after  some  debate  Artab- 
anus adjudged  the  kingdom  to  Xerxes.  Ariamenes  presently  started  up  and 
went  and  showed  obeisance  to  his  brother,  and  taking  him  by  the  hand, 
placed  him  in  the  throne.  And  from  that  time,  being  placed  himself  by 
Xerxes  next  in  the  kingdom,  he  continued  the  same  affection  to  him,  inso- 
much that,  for  his  brother's  honor  engaging  himself  in  the  naval  fight  at  Sal- 
amis,  he  was  killed  there." 

It  is  not  every  crowned  Christian  that  in  the  years  since  Salamis  has  riv- 
aled the  behavior  of  these  brothers.  It  is  not  every  one  in  private  life  that 
rivals  them  to-day.  For,  however  the  blood  may  run  in  our  veins,  neither 
natural  affection  nor  family  feeling  is  always  quite  sufficient  to  carry  us 
through  all  the  temptations  and  trials  and  small  annoyances  of  daily  life  with- 
out constant  use  of  the  Golden  Rule,  without  hourly  remembrance  of  that 
Divine  love  which  shadows  forth  all  family  love. 

It  is  true  that  the  jest  concerning  the  man  who,  in  settling  the  estate  left 
him  by  his  brother,  had  so  much  trouble  with  it  that  he  "almost  wished  he 
hadn't  a'  died,"  is  still  for  some  households  more  a  literal  interpretation  of 
the  prevailing  spirit  there  than  anything  hyperbolic  and  absurd.  But  we 
thank  Heaven  that  we  are  able  to  believe  such  households  are  not  many ; 
that,  so  far  as  domestic  happiness  and  union  go,  most  of  our  homes  are  as 
full  of  peace  as  the  House  Beautiful ;  that  our  land  is  one  long  succession  of 
such  homes ;  and  that  few  of  us  need  to  learn  a  lesson  in  these  high  morals 
from  such  a  people  as  the  Persians,  or  from  such  a  man  as  Xerxes. 

But  although  doing  their  whole  duty  to  the  living,  there  are  many  people 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


95 


TENDERNESS  F.OR  THOSE  DEAD  AND  GONE. 

who  are  unable  to  feel  an  interest  in  those  of  their  race  who  have  passed  from 
earth,  beyond  at  furthest  the  last  two  generations.  Perhaps  they  have  half  a 
sensation  that  these  people  are  strangers,  they  are  so  remote  they  would  not 
care  for  them,  so  why  should  they  do  more  ? 


Love  of  Ancestors. 

Yet,  if  they  think  of  it,  in  every  link  of  the  chain  of  relationship  the  ten  - 
derest  closeness  of  affection  has  probably  subsisted ;  they  themselves  were 


96  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

kissed  by  lips  that  in  turn  received  the  kisses  of  those  behind,  and  they  again 
received  the  love  and  caresses  of  those  yet  behind,  kisses  and  caresses  form- 
ing the  long  chain  between  people  dear  to  one  another,  and  not  strangers, 
though  the  last  known  be  many  generations  gone.  As  they  look  at  the  stiff, 
prim  likeness  of  some  grandame  five  or  six  times  removed,  they  would  not 
regard  her  so  critically  if  they  bethought  themselves  how  that  face  had  lighted 
up  with  smiles,  and  those  lips  had  gathered  sweets  from  the  babies  that  grew 
up  to  hand  down  the  line  that  ends  in  themselves;  they  would  feel  as  if  they, 
too,  had  come  in  for  some  share  of  the  warmth  of  her  nature,  and  recognize 
the  kinship  of  race;  they  would  possibly  find  themselves  even  loving  this 
woman  whom  they  have  never  seen,  and  of  whom  they  know  nothing  but 
that  she  lived  and  loved.  It  is  not  easy  always  to  throw  ourselves  into  the 
personality  of  those  who  belonged  to  a  life  so  long  past  and  so  different  from 
our  own;  but  we  are  sure  to  know  that,  whatever  their  lives  were,  their  hearts 
were  the  hearts  of  mothers  and  fathers,  and  into  those  imagined  natures, 
then,  there  is  not  a  heart  of  their  posterity  which  beats  that  cannot  pulse  some 
of  its  own  warm  life-blood,  and  make  them  for  the  nonce  alive. 

There  can  hardly  be  too  much  closeness  in  family  ties  between  the  mem- 
bers of  an  existing  generation ;  there  is  none  too  much  love  broadcast  in  the 
world,  and  if  it  is  not  our  duty  to  value  and  cherish  those  of  our  own  blood, 
it  would  be  hard  to  say  whose  duty  it  is.  The  more  this  obligation  is  recog- 
nized, the  better  for  the  world  in  general,  and  surely  for  the  world  in  partic- 
ular, for  there  is  nothing  that  smooths  the  way  through  life  like  love,  and 
love  that  is  also  a  duty  has  an  added  force,  and  is  twice  love 


Family  Traditions. 

Few  things  stimulate  this  family  love  more  than  the  treasuring  in  com- 
mon of  family  love  and  tradition,  the  looking  for  the  repetition  of  family 
traits  in  mind  and  body,  and  a  certain  jealous  respect  for  the  honor  of  those 
who  are  not  here  to  maintain  their  own  honor,  no  matter  should  it  even  go 
so  far  as  to  make  sure  that  the  descendants  of  these  ancestors  shall  them- 
selves be  decent  and  honorable  people.  A  certain  tenderness  for  these  dead 
and  gone  persons  is  a  worthy  feeling  that,  far  from  doing  harm,  is  deepening 
and  enlarging  to  the  nature ;  a  certain  determination  to  feel  this  tenderness 
puts  one  already  into  the  attitude  of  reverence  that,  if  it  does  no  other  good, 
inclines  one  to  consider  more  warmly  the  good  of  their  other  descendants  and 
bind  more  nearly  the  family  tie.  One  need  not,  in  order  to  do  fit  reverence 
to  the  old  root  of  a  family  tree,  follow  the  example  of  the  Chinese,  and  make 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


97 


THE    POSSESSION    OF    A    HOME 

a  solemn  business  of  wor- 
shipping one's  ancestors 
with  prayer  and  sacrifice  and 
genuflection;  nor  even  the 
example  of  those  among  our- 
selves who,  judged  by  their 
conversation  with  its  boasts  of  past  splendor,  would  seem  to  be  trying  to 
make  other  people  worship  their  ancestors  in  order  to  throw  glorification 
on  themselves.  For,  after  all,  the  most  fit  act  of  reverence  that  we  can  pos- 
sibly show  this  old  family  tree  of  ours  is  to  prove  to  the  world  that  the  best 
part  of  it  is  not  that  which  is  under  the  sod. 

To  be  sure  there  is  a  certain  pride  in  armorial  bearings  and  titled  de- 
scent, with  which  a  republican  people  have  and  should  have  little  or  nothing 
to.  do,  and  which  to  those  who  believe  ardently  in  our  institutions  seem  but 
agencies  of  harm,  even  if  looked  at  more  as  matters  of  curiosity  and  art  than 
in  any  other  way. 

The  Coat  of  Arms. 

Yet  it  is  pleasant  to  know,  albeit  in  a  country  where  coats  of  arms  are  out 
of  order,  what  the  coat  of  arms  was  that  fell  to  one's  ancestors  in  the  great 


98  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

strifes  for  existence  and  booty  in  previous  centuries,  as  historically  illustra- 
tive of  the  character  and  attainment  of  a  man  whose  ever-so-many-times-di- 
luted blood  may  run  in  our  veins,  and  of  the  standard  which  he  was  obliged 
to  live  up  to,  as  we  now  try  to  live  up  to  our  blue  china.  And  one  also  nat- 
urally takes  pride  in  the  motto  that  indicates,  if  it  chances  so  to  do,  a  lofty 
character  in  the  man  from  whom  we  have  some  part  of  our  character  as  well 
as  of  our  blood.  Many  a  coat  of  arms,  indeed,  as  well  by  its  bearings,  its 
crest,  as  its  motto,  indicates  the  whole  character  and  nature  of  a  family — a 
nature  impressed  so  powerfully  that  all  the  other  sides  of  the  house  have 
failed  to  make  themselves  felt  in  material  modification,  and  if  the  family 
were  to  be  characterized  by  heraldry  to-day,  it  might  be  in  the  same  manner. 
Thus  one  may  actually  have  an  interest  in  the  arms  of  the  family  that  is  per- 
fectly legitimate,  and  not  a  subject  of  pompous  parade  or  improper  pride — an 
interest  in  the  expression  of  heroism,  or  force,  or  whatever  it  may  be  that 
they  commemorate,  shut  up  in  that  little  space  as  if  it  were  crystallized 
there ;  and  one  feels  a  right  to  hope  that  something  of  such  worthy  ancestry 
may  at  some  time  re-appear  in  one's  self  or  in  one's  children. 

For  other  use  than  this,  which  may  be  called  a  virtual  and  virtuous  use, 
citizens  of  a  republic  have  no  need  of  a  coat  of  arms,  which  is  recognized 
neither  by  the  laws  nor  the  customs  of  a  republic ;  and  it  is  to  be  expected 
that  it  will  be  looked  on  with  suspicion,  when  blazoned  abroad  in  all  its  brav- 
ery, by  those  who  are  jealous  of  the  preservation  of  so  costly  a  boon  as  lib- 
erty, wrenched  as  that  was  from  the  hands  of  those  who  still  display  their  ar- 
morial bearings  in  countries  that  do  not  present  so  fair  a  view  of  human  na- 
ture in  the  masses  as  this  one,  in  which  the  common  people  mount  heights  of 
thought  and  education  and  comfort  hand  in  hand  with  the  liberty  that  their 
fathers  gained. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  99 

CHAPTER  FIFTH. 


A  Home  in  Town. 

He  that  holds  fast  the  golden  mean, 
And  lives  contentedly  between 

The  little  and  the  great, 
Feels  not  the  wants  that  pinch  the  poor, 
Nor  plagues  that  haunt  the  rich  man's  door. 

— Coivper'  s  Translation  of  Horace, 

Dear  God  !  the  very  houses  seem  asleep, 
And  all  that  mighty  heart  is  lying  still. 

—  Wordsworth. 

As  many  ways  meet  in  one  town 

As  many  fresh  streams  meet  in  one  salt  sea. 

— Shakespeare. 

I  must  live  among  my   neighbors. 

— Shakespeare. 

I  will  go  lose  myself 

And  wander  up  and  down  to  see  the  city. 

— Shakespeare. 

Good  talkers  are  found  only  in  Paris. 

— Francois   Villon. 

The  axis  of  the  earth  sticks  out  visibly  through  the  centre  of  every  town  or  city. 

— Dr.  H.hnes. 

Then  rose  Elaine  and  glided  through  the  fields 
And  past  beneath  the  weirdly  sculptured  gates 
Far  up  the  dim  rich  city  to  her  kin. 

—  Tennyson. 

Having  our  personal  condition  satisfactory,  in  the  determination  to 
make  the  most  of  the  present,  and  to  surround  ourselves  with  the  atmosphere 
of  hope  and  of  self-respect,  we  find  our  next  stepping-stone  to  happiness  in 
the  possession  of  a  home.  There  are  many  of  us  who,  on  account  of  our 
work,  our  business,  or  our  family  relations,  or  from  a  long  habit  of  genera- 
tions of  our  people,  must  have  our  home  in  the  city,  and  so  prefer  it. 


100 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


Owning  the  House. 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  own  a  house  there;  not  only  because  large  hold- 
ers of  property  there  are  unwilling  to  part  with  it,  but  because  the  first  ex- 
pense is  too  much  for  the  light  purse.  If  it  is  the  want  of  funds  that  oblige 
one  to  forego  the  happiness  of  owning  the  house,  it  is  not  impossible  to  prac- 
tice a  strict  economy  till  enough  money  is  laid  by  for  a  first  payment,  if  the 
house  is  purchasable;  and  then  a  mortgage  is  easily  to  be  negotiated  at  any 
savings  bank  or  with  any  money-lender,  and  the  house  is  practically  ours. 
We  find  then  that  there  is  something  to  live  up  to  in  laying  by  money  each 
3Tear  that  otherwise  we  should  have  wasted  in  uncourted  and  unthinking 
ways;  and  it  gives  us  presently  a  great  pleasure  to  do  this,  and  almost  before 
we  know  it  the  mortgage  is  wiped  out.  But  if  that  may  not  be,  it  is  our  best 
interest  to  obtain  a  long  lease  of  the  house,  not  only  that  the  rent  may  not  rise 
upon  us,  but  that  we  may  not  lose  it  at  a  landlord's  caprice  or  at  the  wish  of 
another  tenant,  and  also  and  more  important  than  either,  that  we  may  secure 
permanence  and  establish  the  idea  of  home.  For  when  our  children  have  to 
note  the  years  of  their  lives  "when  we  lived  in  the  Blank  Street  house,"  and 
"when  we  were  living  in  the  Naught  Square  house"  and  the  rest,  it  is  impos- 
sible that  they  should  have  the  idea  of  home  that  a  permanent  stay  in  any 
one  spot  gives.  The  house  is  a  residence  then  and  not  a  home.  As  it  is, 
moving  frcm  house  to  house  has  become  a  sort  of  habit  with  us,  and  one  of 
the  first  signs  of  advancing  spring  among  us  is  a  certain  restlessness  begin- 
ning to  be  apparent  in  every  house-holder,  together  with  an  anxious  inspec- 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  101 

i 
tion  of  those  placards  that  are  then  blossoming  out   in   the  windows,  and  in 

the  advertising  columns  of  the  daily  news,  with  more  unerring  instinct  as  to 
season  than  the  dandelions  have  in  the  parks.  As  the  days  grow  longer,  and 
the  robins  are  seeking  us  out  again,  and  the  swallows  are  flitting  round  the 
eaves,  these  other  migratory  beings  are  also  on  the  wing  running  from  house 
to  house  in  search  of  a  proper  place  for  their  nests ;  that  is  to  say,  judging 
whether  or  not  their  furniture  will  look  better  in  this  house  than  it  does  in 
that,  and  if  all  other  things  are  equal,  not  to  say  a  trifle  superior.  It  is  a  sin- 
gular commentary  upon  the  insufficiency  of  our  builders  that  this  is  so 


Moving. 

People  do  not  move  for  the  sake  of  moving,  for  the  pleasure  to  be  found 
in  ripping  up  and  putting  down  carpets,  packing  books  and  trunks,  having 
mirrors  smashed  and  paintings  gashed  and  china  destroyed  and  tables 
scarred,  for  the  sake  of  going  through  all  the  trouble  of  hanging  curtains, 
driving  nails,  directing  labor,  repairing  damages,  living  in  a  world  of  dust, 
and  taking  the  risks  of  soaking  rains  on  all  their  household  gods.  There  are 
pleasanter  ways  of  spending  one's  time:  smoking  at  the  club,  visiting  one's 
friends,  lying  on  a  sofa  and  reading  novels,  counting  one's  money — are  all  of 
them  more  cheerful  and  agreeable  occupations ;  and  when  they  are  put  by  for 
all  the  excitations  of  moving,  it  is  only  because  there  is  reason,  and  people 
are  flying  from  the  ills  they  have  to  those  they  know  not  of.  To  those  they 
know  not  of,  we  say,  because  they  will  no  sooner  be  established  in  their  new 
quarters,  where  all  looked  as  if  it  might  be  made  so  comfortable,  than  they 
will  find  the  world  is  hollow  even  there ;  and  if  the  drains  are  not  out  of  or- 
der, then  the  water-pipes  are,  or  the  heaters  are,  or  the  next  neighbors  are, 
or  the  attic  is  haunted,  and  there  is  a  pea-hen  somewhere. 

Of  course  those  people  would  be  very  foolish  who  endured  a  wrong  that 
they  saw  any  way  of  righting,  but  they  should  be  very  sure  it  is  going  to  be 
righted  before  they  bring  upon  themselves  all  the  calamities  of  moving,  re- 
duced to  a  science  now  though  moving  be. 

But  besides  the  breakage  and  ruin  and  irritation  and  fatigue,  too  fre- 
quent moving  brings  a  worse  effect  to  pass,  for  it  has  a  tendency  to  uproot 
character,  and  make  one  like  floating  weed ;  there  is  no  sense  of  stability, 
nor  much  of  that  recognition  of  social  responsibility  which  it  is  desirable  to 
have  in  order  to  be  saved  from  the  Bohemian,  and  which  a  more  permanent 
resting-place  of  the  Lares  and  Penates  gives.  There  is  a  certain  moral  sup- 
port in  the  walls  that  have  surrounded  us  for  any  length  of  time,  and  that  are 


ON  THK  WING. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  103 

known  to  have  done  so ;  we  share  their  permanence  and  acquire  their  respect- 
ability ;  they  fit  us  now,  and  the  new  ones  are  to  be  broken  in. 

In  the  annual  march  of  which  we  are  speaking  there  is  too  often  the  mere 
desire  for  change,  and  restless  dissatisfaction  with  circumstances  that  will 
hardly  be  improved  by  such  means.  The  surrounding  walls  are  different, 
but  the  discontent  has  removed,  too,  and  remains  the  same.  To  these  cases 
we  would  recommend  the  old  story  of  the  farmer  who,  troubled  by  the  per- 
sistent attentions  of  a  ghost,  packed  his  goods  for  another  place,  and  on  the 
way  encountered  an  inquiring  neighbor: 

"What!  you're  flitting?" 

"Yes,  we're  flitting,"  says  the  ghost  (for  they  had  packed  the  spectre 
among  their  beds). 

"Oh,  well,"  says  the  farmer,  "you  flitting  with  us,  too? — Jack,  turn  the 
horses'  heads,  and  home  again!" 

Better  than  the  moving,  when  the  family  has  increased,  and  when  the  cir- 
cumstances are  sufficiently  improved  to  warrant  a  house  of  twice  the  size, 
would  be  the  total  disregard  of  unfashionable  neighborhood,  and  the  pur- 
chase or  hire  of  the  next  house,  turning  both  into  one.  No  matter  whether 
the  street  be  the  most  desirable  or  not,  it  is  the  spot  where  home  is,  the  spot 
to  which  we  wish  the  children's  thoughts  to  return  when  absent,  and  it  is  bet- 
ter to  enlarge,  enrich  and  beautify  that  than  to  move  into  other  houses  so  fre- 
quently that  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  call  any  place  home. 


Inside  the  House. 

Nevertheless  in  the  city  it  is  not  so  much  the  location  or  anything  of  the 
exterior  that  has  to  do  with  happiness  so  much  as  it  is  the  inside  of  the 
house.  Outer  sunshine  is  important  there,  of  course;  but  the  sunshine  of 
gentle  manners  and  pleasant  faces  is  more  important  still,  and  the  social  en- 
joyment of  friends  that  is  to  be  had  in  the  city  i?  something  that  is  impossi- 
ble anywhere  else  for  a  length  of  time.  The  large  rooms,  the  airy  sleeping 
rooms,  the  hot  and  cold  water  and  gas,  the  bath  at  any  hour  of  day  or  night, 
the  physician  at  telephone  call,  comfortable  conveniences  for  getting  about, 
cheap  means  of  reaching  some  of  the  most  superb  gardens  of  the  world,  such 
as  Druid,  Fairmount,  Prospect,  and  Central  and  Franklin  parks;  all  these 
things  add  a  great  deal  to  the  enjoyment  of  life 


The  Vacation. 

If  one  wants  more  there  is  the  summer  vacation  for  many,  in  which  the 
clerk,  the  student,  the  tired  house-keeper,  the  business  man,  the  journalist,  the 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


SUNSHINE  OF  PLEASANT  FACES. 


professional  man,  can  go  out  and  lie  in  the  sun  on  the 
grass,  and  feel  the  pulse  of  the  old  planet,  or  sit  on  the 

sand,  watching  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  sea  like  the  placid  heaving  of  a 
mighty  breast,  hide  in  the  shadow  of  the  woods,  till  they  feel  like  the  wild- 
wood  creatures  themselves,  launch  their  boat  in  the  breakers,  and  know  the 
exhilaration  of  conquering  the  unconquerable,  or  slip  it  through  lily-pads,  and 
watch  their  doubles  in  the  depths  below,  receive  the  freedom  of  the  fields,  as 
heroes  are  given  the  freedom  of  cities,  and  take  hold  of  the  real  business 
of  life  when  they  return  to  town  with  renewed  youth ;  each  enjoying  the  en- 
joyment of  friend  or  neighbor,  as  it  is  narrated  to  him,  as  if  it  were  his  own 
again. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  105 

Social  Pleasure. 

And  even  when  there  is  no  vacation,  the  city  gives  a  social  pleasure  of 
companionship  when  sitting  on  steps  and  stoops  in  the  warm  evenings,  in  the 
strolls  after  ices,  in  the  visits  to  the  roof  gardens,  the  steamer  trips,  the  trol- 
ley rides,  that  have  a  pleasure  all  their  own.  It  is  certain  that  there  is  a  great 
human  happiness  in  the  congregation  and  aggregation  of  life  in  towns,  of 
which  the  widely  separated  rural  populace  can  know  but  little,  while  the  free 
interchange  is  stimulating  to  mental  growth  and  the  reception  of  new  ideas. 


Advantages  of  Town  Life. 

The  opportunities  for  growth  and  improvement  are  innumerable.  Is 
there  a  painter  whose  canvases  bring  the  beauty  of  the  world  into  the  com- 
pass of  a  few  feet — the  sight  and  the  inspiration  are  at  cur  command;  is  there 
a  speaker  of  world-wide  repute,  a  singer  to  whom  kings  and  emperors  are 
glad  to  listen,  a  preacher  that  moves  men's  souls,  it  is  ours  to  listen,  too;  is 
there  a  play  that  thrills,  a  spectacle  that  delights,  a  song  that  charms,  it  is 
all  within  our  reach  in  the  city.  We  gather  the  news  of  the  world  there  on  a 
larger  scale  than  that  on  which  it  is  given  to  rustic  communities,  and  we  have 
absorbed  and  assimilated  the  last  new  thing  before  it  has  reached  what  is 
sometimes  called  the  Provinces,  and  have  gone  on  to  something  newer  yet. 


City  Children. 

The  children  of  the  city,  too,  have,  in  the  mass,  the  advantages  of  schools 
that  are  the  most  enlightening,  and  of  teachers  in  art  whose  talent  and  rank 
make  it  impossible  to  have  them  outside  of  the  wealthy  city.  Take  music 
alone ;  the  best  professors  of  that  art  must  needs  find  their  support  in  cities, 
and  the  child  who  has  their  instruction  frcm  the  start  has  the  best  chance  of 
success. 

Music  at  Home. 

\7e  frequently  hear  derision  cast  upon  the  prevailing  habit  of  instructing- 
young  ladies  indiscriminately  in  the  art  of  music,  and  especially  of  piano- 
playing,  when  they  have  shown  no  very  peculiar  talent  for  it.  But  we  think 
this  derision  a  great  mistake.  These  young  people  would  be  doing  nothing 
better  if  tliey  were  not  practicing  their  finger  exercises.  They  give  them- 
selves, undeniably,  a  pfreat  pleasure,  and  they  make  themselves  able  to  pro- 
duce a  great  deal  for  ctne-rs  throughout  their  little  circle.  The  mistake  is  to 


106  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

be  found  in  the  supposition  that  it  is  necessary  they  should  play  like  Aus  der 
Ohe,  as  if  nobody  might  be  allowed  to  read  who  could  not  roll  his  periods  like 
Edmund  Kean.  It  seems  reasonable  that  children  should  be  taught  the  al- 
phabet of  all  arts,  and  go  farther  if  nature  prompts  the  desire.  As  for  the 
piano-forte,  perhaps  both  maker  and  inventor  would  feel  repaid  for  their  cen- 
turies of  thought  and  work  if  they  could  see,  as  we  have  done,  those  tired 
fathers  that,  hearing  their  young  daughters  thrum  their  tunes  on  the  instru- 
ments they  have  toiled  so  hard  to  buy,  close  their  eyes  and  listen  delightedly 
to  the  poor  little  music  and  feel  as  if  they  enjoyed  indeed  a  foretaste  of  heaven. 
It  is  nearly  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  ago  since  an  announcement 
of  a  concert  was  made  in  a  London  newspaper,  and  it  was  promised  that  a 
certain  singer  would  sing,  accompanied  by  Mr.  Dibdin  "on  a  new  instrument 
called  the  piano-forte." 

The  Piano-Forte. 

A  hundred  years  ago — and  to  what  a  growth  has  that  new  instrument  at- 
tained! Then  it  was  comparatively  of  rude  manufacture,  a  slender  case, 
standing  on  slight  supports,  and  with  keys  tinkling  like  a  music-box,  and 
scarcely  so  much  like  the  modern  piano-forte  as  the  little  tea-kettle  engine 
with  which  the  inventors  first  ran  over  the  road  is  like  the  ponderous  locomo- 
tive of  the  present  day  that  bites  the  rail  as  it  thunders  on  with  a  planetary 
tread. 

There  had  been  one  or  two  pianos,  though,  nearly  seventy  years  before 
that  era,  but  so  very  imperfect  that  it  took  a  multitude  of  new  ideas,  improve- 
ments and  patents  to  bring  even  the  perfection  cf  the  one  of  1776.  Still  some 
of  the  great  composers  had  written  wonderful  music  for  the  instrument  even 
in  that  crude  state,  whether  satisfied  with  it  cr  foreseeing  its  advance.  And 
from  what  it  had  advanced!  The  timbrel,  the  dulcimer,  the  clavichord,  the 
spinet,  the  harpsichord,  the  harp  itself,  each  contributed  its  separate  idea  to 
the  composition  of  the  wonderful  mechanism  on  which  Mr.  Dibdin  played 
that  day,  and  which  has  advanced  so  much  farther  now  that  it  seems  to  be  as 
perfect  as  an  instrument  that  does  not  meet  the  pure  euharmonic  scale  can 
hope  to  be,  and  that  stands,  when  its  lid  is  closed,  as  some  one  has  described 
it,  like  the  sarcophagus  of  unrisen  music,  and  whose  manufacture,  moreover, 
has  reached  in  London  alone  an  average  of  more  than  a  hundred  thousand 
instruments  a  year,  produced  by  some  two  hundred  makers,  and  giving  em- 
ployment and  livelihood,  of  course,  to  an  immense  train  of  workmen  and 
their  families. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  how  many  various  countries  enter  the  lists  in  ca- 


STEAMER  TRIPS. 


I08  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

taring  for  our  daily  music  and  in  finishing  the  case  and  works.  Take,  for  in- 
stance, a  fine  Erard.  Switzerland  has  sent  the  fir,  Norway  the  deal,  Eng- 
land the  pear  and  sycamore  and  holly  wood  and  the  iron,  Riga  the  oak,  the 
tropical  forests  of  Honduras  the  mahogany,  and  of  South  America  the  cedar; 
from  Ceylon  comes  the  ebony,  from  Rio  the  rosewood,  from  India  the  satin- 
wood,  from  Africa  the  ivory,  from  Russia  the  leather,  from  America  the  pine, 
and  copper  and  silver  and  cloth  from  almost  every  meridian.  And  all  this  is 
brought  together;  for  this  great  minds  have  wrestled,  great  minds  have  writ- 
ten, and  all  to  delight  the  heart  of  the  little  miss  who  longs  to  rattle  off  her 
notes  as  she  sees  her  elders  do  it,  and  breaks  her  little  back  for  hours  every 
day  in  the  effort. 

And  why  not?  Why  should  not  great  minds  write  and  wrestle  for  such 
results?  Is  there  any  better  result  than  that  of  bringing  the  pleasure  into  the 
household  that  this  instrument  does?  As  you  sit  and  hear  it  and  look  about 
on  the  group  of  pleased  listeners,  you  think  it  equal  to  a  hearth  any  day  in 
its  power  to 'gather  and  to  cheer;  and  it  has  seemed  to  me  in  certain  family 
circles  where  the  members  clustered  round  the  piano-forte  as  a  center  that  it 
was  a  sort  of  household  altar  at  whose  shrine  the  family  assembled,  and  where 
the  father  looks  on  his  little  daughter,  who  can  evoke  this  magic,  as  on  some- 
thing too  precious  and  perfect  to  be  his,  and  that  the  moral  health  and  refine- 
ment of  the  whole  household  are  assisted  by  the  music,  no  matter  how  imper- 
fect it  may  be  when  measured  by  great  standards;  and  I  have  thought  that 
every  child  ought  to  feel  repaid  for  all  her  toil  in  the  happiness  she  affords 
the  fond  father  and  mother  in  these  hours  of  their  satisfaction. 


Music  Abroad. 

Music,  on  a  broader  scale,  moreover,  has  its  best  cultivation  and  its  larg- 
est audiences  in  the  town,  where  opera  has  asserted  a  sort  of  sovereignty 
and  immense  throngs  never  think  of  grudging  immense  sums  of  money,  glad 
to  get  music  at  its  best  on  any  terms.  For  the  opera  is  the  idealization  and 
apotheosis  of  the  drama;  it  is  the  drama  set  to  music,  and  where  the  subtile 
inflections  and  far-reaching  influences  of  tune  and  harmony  shall  do  more  than 
words  can  do — shall  make  the  prosaic  impassioned,  and  the  impassioned 
divine. 

The  Opera. 

Beside  the  opera,  to  those  that  understand  its  spirit  and  love  its  exalta- 
tions, the  spoken  drama  is  something  infinitely  petty;  the  mask  and  the  co- 


PROFESSORS  FIND  THEIR  SUPPORT  IN  CITIES. 


(I09) 


,,o  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

thurn  seem  then  to  belong  only  to  the  region  into  which  song  lifts  them.  For 
the  opera  is,  after  all,  little  else  than  the  old  Greek  play  perfected  in  the  mat- 
ter of  its  representation,  and  with  the  eloquence  of  language  translated  more 
thoroughly  into  music.  There  is  the  chorus  and  there  are  the  instruments, 
both  of  them  far  transcending  the  old  simple  idea;  all  the  appliances  of  mod- 
ern illumination  and  machinery  take  the  place  of  the  ancients'  open  roof  of 

the  blue  in  those  theatres  that  were 

"clean  scooped 

Out  of  a  hill-side,  with  the  sky  above, 
And  sea  before  our  seats  in  marble  row;" 

and  after  all  that,  all  passion  and  suffering  and  joy  being  crowded  into  the 
action  now  as  then,  tone  and  tune  lift  it  on  their  mighty  wings,  and  love  and 
sorrow  are  heightened  and  deepened  into  the  universal  sympathy  by  the  magic 
of  modulated  numbers,  the  ineffable  power  of  music. 

But  in  old  times  all  Greece  attended   the  representations  of  the  drama. 

The  merits  of  the  new  play  were  discussed   by  the  populace  as  freely  as  the 

price  of  provisions.     Balaustion  and  her  listeners  were  not  the  only  ordinary 

Greeks  who  knew  Euripides  and  Sophocles  by  heart ;  their  verses  belonged 

»  to  the  people,  and  they  had  their  roots  in  the  common  soil. 

But  with  us,  on  the  contrary,  the  opera  is  as  costly  as  all  other  exotics 
are;  it  is  designed  only  for  the  rich — the  boys  who  sang  the  women's  part  to 
the  Greeks  did  not  dream  cf  being  able  to  melt  pearls  in  their  drink  in  the 
way  our  prime-donne  can  do  if  they  will — and  by  force  of  circumstances  the 
poor  have  little  part  in  it.  Nevertheless,  among  those  who  do  frequent  it  here 
there  are  several  perfectly  distinct  classes  of  patrons:  there  are  those  who  go 
because  it  is  the  fashion,  as  they  would  stay  away  if  it  were  the  fashion,  who 
go  because  opera  hats  and  cloaks  are  becoming,  who  go  because  they  are  in- 
vited, because  all  their  friends  are  there,  because  they  want  to  say  they  went, 
want  to  be  seen,  want  to  be  excited;  then  there  are  those  who  go  as  a  matter 
of  curiosity,  because  it  is  a  novelty  to  them,  because  they  want  to  educate 
themselves  in  all  those  things  that  touch  the  finer  senses;  and  lastly,  there  are 
those  who  go  to  intoxicate  soul  and  sense  in  a  luxury  of  sound,  to  revel  in 
the  beauty  of  motion  and  light  and  color,  the  eagerness  of  dramatic  interpre- 
tation, the  satisfaction  of  song — who  go  because  to  them  the  opera  is  a  real 
thing,  a  thing  they  love,  and  that  repays  them  with  an  affluence  of  pleasure. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  in 

Shopping. 

And  there  is  still  another  pleasure  and   advantage  of  life  in  the  city  that 
affords  a  singular  exhilaration  and  satisfaction — the  pleasure  of  going   shop- 


THE    MUSIC    ROOM    CONSERVATORY. 

ping.     There  is  an  excitement  about  this  shopping  that  must  be  forever  un- 
known and  unfelt  by  the  masculine  shopper,  we  fancy. 

In  point  of  fact,  though,  there  is  no  masculine  shopper.  A  man  goes  and 
orders  what  he  wants,  and  there  an  end,  but  a  woman  flutters  from  shop  to 
shop  and  from  street  to  street,  day  after  day  and  week  after  week,  like  a  bee 


112 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


humming  over  sweets,  and  only  retires  from  the  work  at  last  when  not  only 
she  herself,  but  all  her  friends  as  well,  have  no  money  left. 

And  what  a  throng  it  is  of  which  these  shoppers  make  a  part— the  haughty 
urbans  stepping  from  their  satin-lined  carriages;  the  satchel-bearing  suburb- 
ans; the  young  country  school-mistress  who  thinks  the  firm  would  possibly 
become  embarrassed  if  she  did  not  buy  her  new  black  silk  there,  and,  the  ar- 
ticle once  bought,  feels  a  happy  consciousness  of  benefits  conferred,  and  a 
proud  sense  of  having  enlarged  the  trade  of  the  place  in  all  the  markets  of 
the  world ;  then  there  is  the  penniless  companion  of  the  shopper,  who  has  no 
purse  to  open,  and  before  whose  indifferent  eyes  all  these  things — the  peo- 
ple, the  noise,  the  bustle,  the  confusion— pass  like  disordered  phantasms; 
there  is  the  woman  who  never  lets  her  purchase  out  of  hei  sight  after  the 
money  has  passed,  and  laughs  to  scorn  the  parcel  delivery,  and  the  woman 
who  wears  a  circular  cloak  and  is  afraid  to  go  neai  the  counters  for  fear  she 
shall  be  accused  of  stealing,  and  the  woman  who  wears  a  circular  and  takes 
precious  good  care  to  keep  near  the  counters  and  watch  her  chance  for  steal- 
ing; there  is  the  professional  shopper  who  buys  for  others  on  commission, 
and  who  knows  what  there  is  in  the  place  better  than  the  clerks  themselves 
know ;  the  young  bride  who  never  thinks  of  blushing  as  she  adds  treasure  after 
treasure  to  her  trousseau ;  the  young  mother  who  is  nothing  but  a  blush  as 
she  chooses  her  nainsooks  and  long  lawns  and  edgings  and  insertings ;  there 
is  the  wretched  gentleman  who  accompanies  some  shoppers  as  purse-bearer, 
and  in  all  the  crowd  of  women  never  felt  so  exquisitely  uncomfortable  in  his 
life;  and  there  are  the  shoppers  who  have  no  idea  of  buying  at  all,  but  who 
have  come  only  to  see  what  it  is  that  the  rest  of  the  world  is  buying. 

And  what  beautiful  things  they  are  that  the  world  is  buying!  One  would 
say  ingenuity  in  design  and  beauty  of  fabric  and  prodigality  of  undreamed- 
of colors  never  reached  before  the  point  they  touch  to-day ;  for  although  stuffs 
have  been  made  more  barbarously  rich,  we  doubt  if  they  have  ever  been  more 
artistically  beautiful.  The  shopper  whose  check-book  is  not  unlimited  needs 
to  pause  bewildered  among  all  the  brocades  and  damasks,  to  beg  for  patterns, 
and  then  to  go  home  and  ponder  and  balance  and  decide  in  peace,  where  her 
fancy  will  not  be  disturbed  by  rival  claims,  where  the  jostling  of  the  crowd 
will  not  have  made  her  nervous  and  cross  and  difficult  to  please,  and  where 
the  elation  of  the  recently  given  largess  for  her  shopping  will  not  have  so 
turned  her  head  that  she  is  pleased  too  easily  and  buys  too  soon. 

And,  after  all,  the  whole  business  is  much  like  a  lottery.  One  starts  out 
in  the  morning  quite  ignorant  whether  one  is  to  draw  prize  or  blank;  whether 
the  bargain  will  prove  a  bargain  or  otherwise;  whether  what  looked  precisely 
right  in  the  shop  will  not  look  precisely  wrong  at  home,  away  from  its  acces- 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


\UDIENCES    IN    THE    TOWN. 


series,  and  face  to  face  with  the  necessities  of  its  future  companion  pieces  of 
dress ;  whether  the  silk  will  not  wear  shiny,  the  basket  cloth  wear  satiny,  the 
damasse  rub  up  fluffy.  One's  ideas,  too,  are  apt  to  build  such  charming  pic- 
tures of  unattainable  shapes  and  colors  that  the  result  may  be  heart-breaking. 
One  marvels  that  out  of  all  that  wilderness  of  beauty  and  lustre  in  the  shops, 


I14  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

to  which  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe  have  contributed— muslins  from  Farther 
India,  shawls  from  Cathay,  gold-wrought  wefts  from  Egypt,  silks  from  France, 
furs  from  the  North  Pole— one  has  contrived  to  reach  only  such  a  beggarly  and 
unbecoming  end.  And  then  to  the  disappointed  young  shopper,  who  has  not 
been  broken  in  by  a  long  series  of  disappointments,  there  seems  to  be  little 
more  to  live  for,  until  some  rival  shopper,  when  all  is  over,  says  how  perfectly 
that  plume  falls  along  the  brim!  what  a  lovely  contrast  that  color  is  with  the 
skin!  with  what  grace  that  stuff  takes  folds  and  falls!  groans  for  such  a  knack 
ot  making  herself  picturesque,  and  begs  for  her  company  when  next  she  rides 
abroad,  and  knows  well  that  neither  theatre,  nor  dance,  nor  drive,  nor  sail  has 
any  such  swift  and  sweet  excitement  as  shopping  has  for  the  skillful  shopper. 


In  the  Street  Car. 

But  in  all  the  delight  of  shopping  there  is  still  a  drawback,  and  that  is 
the  street-car  and  its  discomforts  and  the  discussion  of  her  conduct  there. 
She  knows  that  it  is  said  of  her  that  it  is  she  who  swings  her  parasol  at  the 
car-driver,  from  the  greatest  allowable  distance,  and  walks  with  more  or  less 
deliberation  toward  the  car  while  it  waits,  where  a  man  would  have  run  with 
good  speed;  that  she  holds  the  car,  the  door  open,  while  she  gives  her  friend 
the  last  message  or  the  superfluous  kiss  and  takes  her  parcels,  and  drops 
them,  and  has  to  pick  them  up  on  the  steps;  that  it  is  she  who  refuses  to 
budge  an  inch  to  make  room  for  the  new  arrival ;  that  it  is  she  who  slips  into 
the  vacated  seat  without  a  word  of  thanks. 

All  these  things,  it  cannot  be  denied,  are  offenses;  yet,  if  we  look  into 
them,  we  may  find  some  little  excuse  for  their  existence.  "It  must  needs  be 
that  offenses  come;  but  woe  to  that  man  by  whom  the  offense  cometh. "  On 
our  first  glance,  for  instance,  at  the  woman  who  swings  her  parasol  a  square 
off,  and  walks  deliberately  to  the  car,  we  see  no  apology ;  but  she  sees  one 
perfectly  in  the  fact  that  every  man  in  the  car  will  make  her  a  subject  of  mer- 
riment and  of  unpleasant  remark  if  she  runs,  that  her  clothes  make  it  very 
difficult  for  her  to  run,  and  that  the  laws  of  deportment,  which  have  had  to  re- 
ceive the  stamp  of  masculine  approbation  in  all  ages  before  they  could  pass 
current,  make  it  one  of  the  high  misdemeanors  for  a  woman  to  be  seen  run- 
ning. For  another  count  in  the  indictment  there  is  really  nothing  to  be  said. 
The  woman  who  keeps  the  car  waiting  for  her  kisses  and  good-bys  and  mu- 
tinous parcels  is  a  child  who  should  be  taken  by  the  shoulders  and  pushed  in. 
Nor  can  much  defense  be  made  for  the  woman  who  refuses  to  budge,  since 
that  is  an  unkindness,  a  churlishness,  in  which  she  is  untrue  to  her  sex ;  yet 


STEPPING    STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


SHOPPING. 


the  truth  is  that,  having-  paid  for  her  seat,  she  has  a  right  to  enjoy  it  without 
relinquishing  a  third  of  it  on  either  side  only  to  have  her  apparel  ruined  by 


11" 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


the  heavy  weight 
crushed  upon  it,  and 
frequently  not  merely 
a  heavy  weight,  but  a 
soiled  and  contamina- 
ting one.  For  the  last 
accusation,  and  the 
one  more  dwelt  upon 
than  any,  it  is,  with- 
out doubt,  occasion- 
ally true  that  women  take  a  proffered  seat  and  neglect  to  express  their  obliga- 
tion. Yet  here  again  it  may  be  said  in  their  behalf,  in  the  first  place,  that 
they  would  almost  invariably  rather  stand  than  force  another  person  to  do  so, 
and  generally  take  the  seat  only  to  avoid  a  scene  and  the  appearance  of  anything 
conspicuously  ungracious.  In  the  next  place,  the  confusion  and  embarrassment 
incident  probably  divert  the  mind  from  the  conventionality — for  a  convention- 


SATCHKL-BEARING    SUBURBANS. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  117 

ality  it  is,  when  the  giver  in  his  own  mind  knows  that,  of  course,  the  taker  can 
not  help  but  thank  him,  whether  she  says  so  or  not.  Again,  it  is  not  easy  to 
thank  a  person  who  perhaps  vacates  his  seat  without  a  word  or  a  nod,  and 
whose  back  is  too  quickly  turned  for  him  to  receive  them  if  there  are  thanks 
to  give ;  and  one  is  in  as  unpleasant  a  position  when  sending  thanks  at  a 
man's  back  as  in  not  rendering  them  at  all.  And  finally,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  fact  that  a  woman's  fare  is  as  good  as  a  man's  fare,  and  entitles  her  to  a 
seat,  or  of  the  circumstance  that  it  is  an  affair  of  noblesse  oblige  with  the 
stronger  party  to  care  for  the  weaker,  and  the  man  thus  does  it  as  something 
due  to  himself,  and  not  at  all  in  order  to  please  the  individual  woman,  and 
therefore  does  not  make  her  his  debtor,  yet  so  long  as  men  refuse  to  women 
their  obvious  equality  in  human  rights,  she  does  not  so  much  wrong,  after 
all,  as  we  implied  in  the  beginning,  in  claiming  privilege;  and  since  all  that 
she  might  be  and  do  and  rise  to  is  taken  from  her  in  exchange  for  protection, 
a  seat  is  her  privilege,  for  which  she  owes  no  more  thanks  than  a  convict  does 
for  fetters.  Nevertheless,  we  think  no  woman  of  any  self-respect  ever  fails 
in  giving  thanks  when  the  opportunity  is  allowed  her. 

In  the  mean  time  the  men  who  stare  the  women  out  of  countenance;  who 
put  their  arms  unnecessarily  about  the  women  in  helping  them  along  their 
way;  who  soil  the  floor,  according  to  their  unclean  custom,  where  the  women 
must  tread  and  drag  their  dresses,  even  if  they  do  not  exercise  their  skill  in 
targetry  on  those  dresses  themselves — such  men  (and  there  are,  to  say  the 
least,  as  many  of  them  as  of  the  thankless  women)  should  have  very  little  to 
say  about  courtesy  in  the  cars. 


The  Cheery  Town. 

With  all  these  pleasures  and  distractions,  even  with  their  drawbacks,  the 
city-dweller  will  tell  you  there  is  no  place  one-half  so  good,  so  bright,  so 
cheery  as  the  town.  He  will  tell  you  that  throughout  sacred  Scripture  itself 
Heaven  is  described  as  a  city,  the  celestial  city,  and  the  most  splendid  vision 
of  the  Apocalypse  is  of  a  city  descending  from  the  sky.  He  will  tell  you 
that  all  great  movements  have  their  origin  in  the  lively  thought  and  action 
of  the  town. 

The  City  Parlor. 

And  he  will  tell  you  that  in  lesser  matters  the  city,  always  in  advance, 
has  reached  elegance  and  an  inhabited  appearance  much  earlier  than  the 


nS  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

country  at  large,  and  drawing-rooms  were  darkened  there  the  first  and 
crowded  with  plenishing,  and  there  were  paintings  and  statuary  in  them 
before  these  objects  traveled  farther,  and  there  were  portieres  and  screens  and 
placqucs  and  brass-work  and  bronze  and  old  silver  and  china  and  beveled 
glass  and  needle  painting,  dark  walls  and  multiplied  mantels  shelf  over  shelf, 
short  curtains  and  long  curtains,  huge  vases  and  little  panels  and  the  rest. 
And  all  this  while  the  rural  parlor  was  ornamented  only  with  the  framed 
sampler,  and  the  family-tree,  and  the  lady  with  the  big  handkerchief  at  the 
tomb  under  weeping  willows,  with  at  best  four  prints  in  gilt  frames  or  pos- 
sibly a  couple  of  crude  portraits  or  black  silhouettes,  always  excepting,  of 
course,  those  colonial  mansions  that  rejoiced  in  "Smyberts"  and  ''Copleys." 
Surely  the  city  parlor  had  the  right  of  it.  The  moral  forces  are  not  necessa- 
rily strengthened  by  contact  with  bare  and  uninviting  walls;  the  nature,  in- 
stead of  being  developed  to  better  things,  will  be  constantly  returned  upon  it- 
self, in  the  absence  of  objects  stimulating  the  fancy  and  leading  the  thought 
outward.  And  certainly  the  intellectual  forces  in  almost  every  such  instance 
are  starved,  and  where  one  is  of  such  build  that  he  chances  to  be  improved  by 
the  concentration  of  thought  that  such  ascetic  dwellings  might  foster,  others 
are  only  dwarfed  and  withered. 

The  age  that  has  become  famous  for  its  unhealthy  self-introspection 
could  hardly  do  a  better  thing  than  make  the  surrounding  material  walls  of  its 
daily  life  diverting  and  interesting,  while  all  that  hangs  upon  them  or  lies 
between  them  leads  the  thought  out  to  larger  life  and  experience,  to  the  past 
history  of  art,  to  its  future  hopes,  and  to  its  effect  upon  humanity ;  and  if  the 
harmony  of  all,  the  lovely  and  luxurious  combination,  excite  the  pleasure-lov- 
ing senses,  the  controlling  brain  also  is  excited  in  memory,  imagination,  in- 
vention, and  appreciation.  One  realizes  the  falsehood  of  that  old,  strict  idea 
that  one  could  not  be  good  and  be  comfortable,  understands  that  enjoyment 
of  fine  colors  and  fine  contours  does  not  belong  exclusively  to  the  Scarlet  Lady, 
and  that  beauty  and  brimstone  are  really  not  inseparable. 


Old  China. 

If  the  city  parlor,  in  its  best  estate,  of  course,  had  nothing  else  but  its  old 
china  on  which  to  rely,  it  would  have  sufficient  excuse  for  its  being. 

The  fabric  itself  is  so  exquisite,  in  the  translucent  material,  in  the  enamel, 
in  the  tints,  in  the  shapes,  that  one  would  search  in  vain  outside  the  kingdom 
of  jewels  and  flowers  for  anything  so  alluring  to  the  eye  as  that  bit  of  china 
in  which,  when  held  before  the  light,  the  spirit  of  lambent  flame  seems  to 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  119 

float  as  it  does  in  an  opal,  and  whose  designs,  even  when  not  intrinsically 
charming,  are  always  interesting  through  history  and  through  suggestion,  and 
the  love  o^  which  among  our  own  people  dates  back  more  than  two  hundred 
years. 

There  is  more  quaint  and  curious  tradition  clustering  round  the  stoiy  of 
pottery  and  porcelain  than  of  any  other  of  the  arts,  from  the  tale  of  the  man 
who,  in  despair,  after  ceaseless  efforts  to  produce  the  quality  at  which  he 
aimed,  leaped  into  his  furnace,  and  produced  the  desired  flux  in  the  consum- 
ing of  his  own  body,  and  has  been  worshiped  ever  since  among  the  less  enlight- 
ened practicers  of  the  ceramic  art,  to  the  touching  story  of  Palissy  the  Pot- 
ter, and  the  noble  work  of  Wedgwood. 

As  far  back  in  Roman  record  as  the  time  when  Numa  Pompilius  reigned 
a  king,  we  find  a  school  or  college  of  pottery  founded,  from  which  we  can  judge 
that  the  subject  was  held  in  high  esteem  even  at  that  day.  The  Greeks  al- 
ready had  potteries  at  Samos  and  at  Corinth  and  elsewhere — and  we  all  know 
the  absolute  charm  which  the  Etrurians  had  reached  in  such  productions — 
while  the  most  exquisite  enamel  has  been  found  in  the  tombs  of  the  Egyp- 
tians. At  perhaps  still  remoter  periods,  in  the  gloom  of  what  we  call  the 
early  twilight  of  civilization,  the  Orient  had  reached  perfection  in  pottery, 
and  rivaled  the  best  the  world  has  done  in  porcelain,  the  tower  of  Nankin, 
whose  tiles  are  of  the  rarest  faience,  being  the  one  concerning  which  the  above 
legend  of  the  sacrifice  of  a  life  is  related. 

It  is  not  merely  for  their  beauty,  though,  that  these  things  acquire  their 
interest.  The  historian  has  made  them  subserve  many  a  matter  of  profound 
research.  When  he  finds  the  remnants  of  a  race — some  bones  scattered  in  a 
cave  or  under  a  bank  of  earth,  weapons  round  about,  and  even  traces  of  food 
—he  knows  instantly  at  what  point  of  civilization  that  race  perished,  not  by 
its  stone  or  copper  knives  and  axes,  but  by  its  jars  and  pipkins  or  the  absence 
of  them;  for  their  presence  signifies  that  a  race  has  reached,  as  we  may  say, 
the  boiling-point;  shows  that  man  then  was  no  longer  in  the  condition  of  the 
mere  animal,  devouring  raw  meat  with  teeth  and  .talons.  And  the  antiqua- 
rian, meanwhile,  in  his  search  among  the  ruins  of  the  buried  Asian  cities,  is 
enabled  by  the  style  of  the  pottery  he  finds  to  say  what  power  ruled,  and  what 
people  obeyed  the  rule. 

Of  course  the  manufacture  of  china  is  something  far  beyond  that  of  pot- 
tery in  importance,  but  the  one  is  the  crude  alphabet  of  which  the  other  is  the 
poem ;  and  pottery  itself  has  now  and  then  risen  to  a  height  where  even  china 
falters,  as  in  those  instances  of  majolica  that  it  has  not  been  disdained  to 
adorn  with  the  work  of  Raphael  and  Julio  Romano  and  Titian.  If  one  could 
but  own  such  marvelous  specimens  to  delectate  the  eyes,  one's  cars  could 


lao  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

endure  all  the  sarcasms  of  those  in  ignorance  of  such  beauty  with  exceeding 
equanimity.  Addison,  to  be  sure,  was  among  the  ignorant  in  this  respect, 
or  pretended  that  he  was.  "There  is  no  inclination  in  women  that  more  sur- 
prises me  than  this  passion  for  china,"  he  somewhere  takes  occasion  to  say. 
'When  a  woman  is  visited  with  it,  it  generally  takes  possession  of  her  for 
life.  China  vessels  are  playthings  for  women  of  all  ages.  An  old  lady  of 
forescore  shall  be  as  busy  in  cleaning  an  Indian  mandarin  as  her  great-grand- 
daughter is  in  dressing  her  baby."  But  when  we  remember  that  Horace 
Walpole  was  of  precisely  the  opposite  persuasion,  that  Kingsley  was  an  ama- 
teur and  Gladstone  a  collector,  we  can  afford  merely  to  pity  one  who  did  not 
know  how  to  enjoy  the  bits  of  delicate  color  and  light  with  which  we  are  fond 
of  adorning  our  cabinets. 

What  is  there,  in  sooth,  that  can  be  lovelier  than  a  cup  of  that  delicious 
sea-green  called  the  Celadon,  a  concretion  of  sea-foam  out  of  which  the  nereids 
themselves  might  sup,  and  one  of  which  Robert  Cecil  gave  Queen  Elizabeth, 
as  being  a  fit  gift  for  royalty,  unless  it  is  that  egg-shell  cup  through  which 
the  light  falls  rosy  as  through  a  baby's  upheld  fingers,  while  the  odd  designs 
upon  them  both  tell  strange  tales  cf  life  and  worship  and  floral  fancies  among 
the  curious  people  who  make  them.  And  yet  one  would  pause  a  moment  be- 
fore giving  them  the  palm  over  this  claret-colored  Chelsea  cup,  with  its  gold 
anchor  mark ;  over  that  delicious  Dresden  candelabrum  where  the  hand  of 
Summer  seems  to  have  scattered  the  flowers;  or  this  vase  in  Capo  di  Monte 
china,  where  the  high  relief  of  the  figures  dancing  round  about  it  throws  a 
shadow  on  the  tints  beyond ;  or  these  miracles  of  Sevres,  exhibited  every 
Christmas  in  the  Louvre  along  with  the  latest  work  of  the  Gobelin  looms,  the 
cups  and  vases  painted  after  Watteau,  now  in  bleu  du  rci,  now  in  rcse  du 
Barry \  now  in  vert  prc,  looking  as  if  the  wings  of  birds  and  the  petals  of  blos- 
soms had  simply  been  cast  under  a  spell  beneath  the  gloss  of  enamel,  and  now 
made  more  precious  yet  with  jewels. 

Where  all  are  so  lovely  it  is  hard  to  choose;  and  a  collector  is  tolerably 
sure  that  if  she  selects  a  vase  of  Henri  Deux,  with  its  yellow  glory,  she  will 
long  for  a  basket  of  Palissy's  ware  in  violet  relief;  if  she  has  Dresden,  she 
will  want  Berlin,  that  she  will  never  think  her  china  closet  complete  with- 
out a  bit  of  old  Bow  with  its  bee  beneath  the  handle;  and  that,  in  fact,  hav- 
ing once  begun,  she  will  never  be  happy  again  so  long  as  the  snow-white 
shapes  encircle  the  blue  of  the  Portland  vase  itself  and  are  not  hers. 

And  meanwhile  the  lover  of  the  quaint  and  the  suggestive  has  united 
town  and  country  in  another  article  cf  ornamentation — only  the  good  countrv 
housewife  would  never  have  it  in  her  parlor,  as  the  city  wife  is  eager  to  do'. 
Perhaps  its  adoption  yields  a  little  too  much  to  the  rococo,  but,  it  is  interest- 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  121 

ing  inasmuch  as  it  makes  the  necessary  article  of  earlier  centuries  the  play- 
thing of  the  later.  It  can,  indeed,  hardly  be  anything  but  a  plaything,  for 
what  machinery  already  does  so  perfectly  is  unlikely  to  be  rivaled  by  the 
amateur  fine  lady's  fingers;  and  the  thing  is  now  only  saved  from  absurdity 
by  its  history,  which  is  something  inquisitorial  in  the  bondage  it  imposed,  by 
its  associations,  which  are  sacred,  and  by  its  outlines,  which  are  those  of  clear 
beauty 

The  Spinning-Wheel. 

The  spinning-wheel  is  certainly  a  pretty  sight,  whether  we  should  see  it 
in  a  drawing-room  or  in  the  moty  sunbeam  slanting  through  some  old  gar- 
ret; and  the  little  linen-wheel  which  our  great-grandmothers  used  to  stand  at 
their  knees  is  a  real  object  for  an  artist. 

Who  can  see  its  slant  lines,  its  lovely  curves,  see  its  swift  revolving  cir- 
cles, and  the  fine  thread  trembling  to  a  mist  as  it  draws  out  its  length,  and 
hear  the  pleasant  hum  it  makes,  without  thoughts  of  sunny  mornings,  and 
bees  in  flowers,  and  all  sweet  rural  sights  and  sounds?  Few  of  us  in  looking 
at  it  think  of  the  imprisonment  of  the  spinner,  still  wetting  her  broadening 
thumb  as  the  sunshine  fell  without,  and  she  longed  to  be  there,  too — the 
spinner  like  her  of  Mendelssohn's  "Song  Without  Words,"  who  sings  her  tune 
to  the  whirr  of  the  wheel  while  the  birds  carol  and  the  bees  hum  outside.  ' 

Rude  as  the  spinning-wheel  seems  to  us  now,  it  was  as  wonderful  an  ad- 
vance in  its  day  from  the  hand-distaff  as  the  jenny  and  mule  and  power-loom 
have  been  in  their  turn  from  the  spinning-wheel.  The  distaff,  indeed,  made 
few  improvements  in  itself  in  all  its  long  career,  the  only  notable  changes 
being  that  from  the  time  when  very  primitive  people,  who  had  little  or  no  use 
of  metal,  loaded  its  spindle  with  a  perforated  stone,  and  others  carried  the 
load  at  the  top  instead  of  at  the  bottom  of  the  spindle;  but  save  for  these  sim- 
ple changes,  and  the  fact  that  the  distaff  which  princes'  daughters  used 
was  overlaid  with  gold,  the  distaff  with  which  Clotho  spun  was  the  same 
as  that  which  Burns' Jean  took  to  her  "rocking  on  Fasten's  Eve" — "rock" 
being  the  old  term  for  the  distaff  and  spindle.  It  was  the  simplest  sort  of 
pretty  apparatus,  not  much  more  inelegant  to  carry  than  the  modern  tatting. 
No  dame  or  damsel  went  abroad  without  it.  The  good  spinner  loaded  her 
distaff  with  the  tow  at  its  upper  end,  and  carried  it  protruding  from  under 
her  left  arm,  and  as  she  pulled  the  thread  out  between  thumb  and  finger,  the 
weight  of  the  hanging  and  leaded  spindle  twisted  it  round  and  round  still 
closer,  and  she  wound  it  measure  by  measure  about  the  body  of  the  spindle 
as  she  twisted. 


i 
iaa  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

The  Distaff. 

The  first  day  after  the  twelve  winter  holidays  used  to  be  known  as  St. 
Distaff's  Day,  for  then  the  women  renewed  the  work  that  play  had  so  long  in- 
terrupted. It  was  still,  in  real  fact,  only  another  holiday,  for  the  men  made 
a  point  of  leaving  their  own  work  to  set  fire  to  the  flax  the  women  were  bring- 
ing out,  and  the  women,  in  turn,  provided  themselves  with  buckets  of  cold 
water  to  dash  over  the  depredators,  and  all  was  good  humor. 

'If  the  maids  a-spmnmg  go, 
Burn  the  flax  and  fire  the  tow ; 
Bring  in  pails  of  water  then, 
Let  the  maids  bewash  the  men,' 

sang  Herrick ;  by  which  we  may  judge  the  custom  to  have  been  tolerably 
prevalent. 

It  is  observable  that  the  occupation  of  the  distaff  and  the  spinning-wheel 
has  associated  itself  with  women  even  to  the  point  of  contempt,  our  first  pic- 
tured memorials  of  the  race  on  Egyptian  and  Hindostanee  monuments  show- 
ing women  with  the  useful  toy  in  hand — the  toy  despised  by  all  men  but 
Achilles  and  Hercules.  "On  the  side  of  the  spear"  was  an  old  legal  phrase- 
ology to  signify  a  descent  in  the  male  line,  "on  the  side  of  the  distaff"  to  in- 
dicate female  descent.  In  the  early  times,  when  rapine  and  all  violence  were 
the  distinguishing  masculine  traits  or,  we  may  say,  employments,  honor  was 
held  to  come  only  from  such  work  as  bloodshed,  conquest  and  plunder;  there 
was  none  given  for  the  quiet  performance  of  the  duties  at  home ;  and  as  women 
stayed  at  home  pursuing  their  quiet  duties,  preparing  food  and  clothes  and 
nursing  the  wounded,  the  distaff  became  disdainfully  associated  with  them. 
"The  Crown  of  France  never  falls  to  the  distaff,"  said  the  contemptuous 
French  proverb;  but  it  is  more  than  a  French  proverb  that  womanVs  wit  can- 
not overreach,  and  the  distaff  has  in  reality  frequently  and  secretly  been  the 
sceptre  there,  the  power  behind  the  throne,  making  and  unmaking  the  for- 
tunes of  the  nation. 

It  was  not  till  the  fourteenth  century  that  the  distaff  was  superseded  by 
vile  spinning  wheel ,  and  not  till  about  a  hundred  years  later  that  the  wheel 
appeared  at  which  the  spinner  could  sit  instead  of  stand;  and  almost  imme- 
diately afterward  the  term  spinster  in  our  language  was  modified  so  as  to  be 
descriptive  only  of  an  unmarried  woman  below  the  rank  of  a  viscount's  daugh- 
ter, and  not  of  all  unmarried  women — though  why  unmarried  at  all  is  a  ques- 
tion we  leave  for  Rosa  Dartle;  for  although  the  farm-wives  of  good  condition 
were  wont  to  hire  their  spinning  done  by  any  spinner  in  need  of  the  work, 
there  was  never  a  farm-wife  who  did  not  know  how  to  do  it  herself. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  123 

The  Spinster. 

The  distinctive  nature  of  the  term  spinster,  as  applicable  to  none  above  a 
viscount's  daughter  in  rank,  is  a  slight  curiosity  in  history :  it  is  probably  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  increase  of  wealth  and  the  introduction  cf  printed  literature 
enabled  ladies  of  rank  to  find  amusement  and  employment  otherwheres  than 
at  the  wheel,  which  was  abandoned  to  the  use  of  those  unable  to  command 
the  luxury  of  their  own  time — women  presumably  below  the  rank  of  a  vis- 
count's daughter.  Wonderful  things  used  to  be  done  with  the  wheel,  though 
in  those  times  before  machinery  made  nothing  of  wonders.  One  girl  was 
known  to  spin  a  pound  of  wool  into  eighty-four  thousand  yards  of  thread, 
almost  equal  to  forty-eight  miles;  and  another  at  a  later  period  spun  the  same 
quantity  into  a  thread  something  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifteen  miles  in 
length — but  she  was  a  famous  spinner. 


The  Adventures  of  a  Pound  of  Cotton. 

Since  steam,  that  great  afrite,  has  put  the  hand  to  shame,  these  wonders 
have  probably  been  eclipsed,  and  the  adventures  of  a  single  pound  of  cot- 
ton, borne  on  its  wings,  and  for  sale  in  the  London  market,  are  like  a  tale  of 
the  Arabian  Nights — journeying  from  the  Indies  to  London  docks,  thence  to 
Lancashire  to  be  spun,  thence  to  Paisley  to  be  woven,  to  Ayrshire  to  be  tam- 
boured, to  Dumbarton  to  be  hand-sewed,  back  to  Paisley,  on  to  Glasgow  for  a 
finish,  and  once  more  in  London,  having  traveled  five  thousand  miles  by 
sea  and  one  thousand  by  land,  supporting  by  the  labor  spent  on  it  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  people,  and  increasing  its  own  value  some  two  thousand  per 
cent. 

The  spinning-wheel,  certainly  as  much  as  anything,  has  been  a  badge  of 
woman's  servitude.  For  while  all  her  time  was  needed  to  make  the  clothing 
for  her  family,  there  was  none  for  her  to  spend  in  illuminating  her  mind. 
And  so  it  is  not  unpleasant  to-day  to  see  this  old  badge  made  the  sport  of 
circumstance,  and  what  was  once  a  slavery  now  affording  pastime  in  the  draw- 
ing-room. Broken  and  disused,  and  in  dishonor,  and  shorn  of  its  locks,  as  it 
is,  it  was  once  a  mighty  tyrant ;  and  we  should  think  the  lovely  ladies,  free  to 
pursue  pleasure,  art,  learning,  to  mount  the  ladder  to  the  stars  with  men,  and 
who  have  adorned  their  drawing-rooms  with  the  mimicry  and  mockery  of  its 
old  estate,  might  in  some  twilight  be  haunted  by  a  strange  dream  of  it,  pull- 
ing down  the  temple  of  their  freedom  and  happiness  about  them.  And  as 
they  play  with  it  now,  in  all  their  liberty  and  possibilities  and  comparative 


124 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 


THE    DISTAFF 

enlightenment,  they  may  do  well  to  be  mindful  of  the  bondage  in  which  it 
held  their  "forebys, "  and  in  which  its  rude  forerunner,  the  distaff,  still  holds 
certain  of  their  sisters.  "The  art  of  spinning,"  says  an  elegant  writer,  "in 
one  of  its  simplest  and  most  primitive  forms,  is  yet  pursued  in  Italy,  where 
the  country-women  of  Caia  still  turn  the  spindle  unrestrained  by  that  ancient 
rural  law  which  forbade  its  use  without  doors.  The  distaff  has  outlived  the 
consular  fasces,  and  survived  the  conquests  of  the  Goth  and  the  Hun  But 
rustic  hands  alone  now  sway  the  sceptre  of  Tanaquil,  and  all  but  the  peasant 
disdain  a  practice  which  once  beguiled  the  leisure  of  high-born  dames." 


Society. 

Such  rooms  as  those  of  which  the  old  china  and  rich  draperies  and  costly 
bric-a-brac  make  part  are  necessary  in  a  place  where  what  is  known  as  Society 
takes  on  its  most  splendid  guise,  and  where  there  is  such  a  positive  thing  as 


STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  125 

the  gay  season.  For  it  makes  no  difference  how  much  want  and  suffering 
may  be  abroad  in  the  town  or  in  the  land,  there  is  always  a  gay  season  in 
town,  and  probably  there  always  will  be  one.  For  as  one  generation  tires, 
another  is  springing  upon  the  scene,  and  all  the  fardels  belonging  to  the  glit- 
ter and  frolic  that  these  are  dropping  from  their  hold  those  are  ready  to  catch 
as  they  dance  on.  The  new  belles  and  the  new  beaux  will  always  have  a  mu- 
tual attraction ;  the  old  belles  drop  off,  to  be  sure,  but  the  old  beaux  linger  to 
see  these  fresh  young  beauties  who  are  just  taking  up  the  business  of  life 
with  such  a  sparkle  in  their  wondering  eyes,  such  a  vitality  in  their  veins, 
and  when  any  of  these  old  beaux  drops  off,  some  one  of  the  young  belles  usu- 
ally drops  off  with  him. 


The  Gay  Season. 

Yes,  there  probably  will  always  be  a  gay  season  so  long  as  society  holds 
together  by  its  present  structure,  and  even  those  who  have  and  desire  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  it  must  witness  more  or  less  of  it  and  be  aware  of  it,  how- 
ever unwillingly.  Artistically  considered,  it  has  a  certain  value,  if  only  as 
showing  the  possibilities  of  beauty  attainable  under  the  present  conditions  of 
favorable  life.  We  need  not  go  to  the  ancients  in  these  times  for  the  ideal  of 
loveliness  in  the  outward  forms  of  social  mingling.  Some  daylight  sacrifi- 
cial festival  by  the  blue  waters  of  the  ^Egean,  with  torches  turning  pale  in 
the  sunshine,  with  the  flower-decked  and  filleted  victim,  the  dancing  youths 
and  maidens  under  the  festoons  of  their  floral  ropes  and  wreaths,  may  have 
been  more  remotely  poetical ;  a  Roman  supper  may  have  been  more  voluptu- 
ous; a  Pompeiian  revel  may  have  been  more  wild  and  wanton;  but  a  mask  of 
the  gods  could  hardly  be  more  beautiful  than  are  some  of  the  nightly  enter- 
tainments of  the  gay  season  of  the  present.  Winter  changed  to  summer, 
night  into  softly  glowing  day,  bare  walls  to  bowers  of  bloom  out  of  which 
gleam  statues  like  the  gods  just  alit,  and  pictures  like  dreams  of  a  yet  lovelier 
life — all  this  constitutes  an  enchanted  background  for  the  throngs  that  troop 
across  it,  the  dark  shadows  of  one  class  of  the  participants  in  the  pleasure 
throwing  out  all  the  brilliance  of  the  other  portion  with  its  rosy  flesh  and 
glistening  hair  and  starry  eyes  and  curving  outlines,  the  brilliance,  moreover, 
of  the  material  in  which  this  beauty  robes  itself,  to  whose  lustrous  wealth 
neither  the  dreams  of  poets  nor  the  facts  of  antiquity  ever  approached ;  for 
laces  and  silks  and  velvets,  at  any  rate,  are  of  the  modern  world,  and  the  sub- 
stance in  which  poets  clothe  their  dreams  of  beauty  is  filmy  and  vaporous  stuff 
as  thin  as  moonshine.  And  meanwhile,  if  the  gay  season  is  an  artistic  sue- 


i26  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

cess,  wherever  it  kindles  the  wit  in  any  degree  and  puts  a  sparkle  into  con- 
versation, it  is  intellectual  success  as  well.  Those  who  admire  and  excuse  this 
series  of  festive  pageants  declare  that  there  is  another  view  of  it  worthy  of  a 
pause,  and  that  is  a  consideration  of  its  beneficent  nature  in  our  social  econ- 
omy, in  the  part  of  the  good  Samaritan  which  it  so  undoubtedly  plays.  Does 
this  seem  an  impossible  or  Quixotic  view?  Give,  then,  but  a  glance  to  the 
army  of  workers — glad  and  thankful  to  be  workers — whom  this  gay  season 
calls  to  the  front;  not  merely  housemaid  and  cook,  coachman  and  groom, 
milliner  and  seamstress,  but  the  multitude  of  those  who  produce  and  prepare 
the  raw  material  which  these  ultimately  handle,  the  multitude  of  underlings 
who  assist  them  all,  till  the  work  ramifies  through  a  thousand  far-extended 
avenues,  so  that  some  single  ball  not  only  calls  into  requisition  the  forces  of 
market-men,  the  finest  fancies  of  florists  and  designers,  the  running  of  the 
steamships  that  import  its  novelties,  but  saves  from  starvation  and  beggary 
the  denizen  of  many  an  attic. 

The  gay  season  may  in  itself — as  those  who  roll  to  swell  its  triumph,  with 
plume  and  jewel,  with  epaulet  or  train,  forget  the  existence  of  any  others  less 
fortunate  than  themselves — be  called  as  heartless  as  any  other  great  machine ; 
but,  like  most  great  machines,  it  does  unconsciously  a  tremendous  work,  and, 
with  the  industries  it  necessitates,  tides  over  the  dark  and  cruel  winter 
months,  when  there  is  little  hope  and  less  joy  to  those  who  otherwise  might 
have  no  season  at  all.  May  there  always  be  a  gay  season,  then,  its  uphold- 
ers exclaim — net  too  gay  a  season,  not  a  mad  revel,  but  a  brief  and  brilliant 
tournament  of  youth  and  beauty!  May  the  early  years  enjoy  it,  and  the  ad- 
vancing years  look  on  well  pleased  with  the  pageant !  May  it  charm  for  the 
passing  moment,  but  not  captivate  one  instant  beyond  its  proper  power;  and, 
while  its  light  burns  ever  so  brightly,  may  it  not  put  out  the  sun!  For,  after 
all,  there  are  those  of  good  reason  who  totally  disapprove  of  the  extravagance 
and  the  waste  of  time.  The  philosophers  and  the  political  economists  deny 
that  there  is  any  advantage  in  the  expenditure  of  wealth  after  this  fashion, 
assuring  us  that  only  injury  is  wrought  thereby. 

Mr.  Ruskin  says  that  as  long  as  there  is  cold  and  nakedness  in  the  land, 
splendor  of  dress  is  a  crime.  "As  long  as  there  are  any,"  he  says,  "who have 
no  blankets  for  their  beds,  and  no  rags  for  their  bodies,  so  long  it  is  blanket- 
making  and  tailoring  we  must  set  people  to  work  at— not  lace." 

Society  is  of  course  a  charming  thing:  the  reunion  of  kindred  souls  in 
scenes  made  as  lovely  as  artifice  can  make  them ;  people  always  at  their  best, 
and  conscious  of  it;  with  every  enjoyment  to  pass  the  time— pleasure,  excite- 
ment, admiration,  the  dance,  the  opera,  the  theatre,  the  drive.  But  it  is  life 
in  too  concentrated  a  form,  like  the  nourishment  where  nothing  goes  to  waste, 


ia8  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

and  which,  while  it  enriches  the  blood,  causes  the  atrophy  of  certain  of  the  or- 
gans. %  The  experiment  having  been  tried  of  feeding  guinea-pigs  with  sugar 
alone,  it  was  found  that  the  little  creatures  lived  a  short  space  of  time,  and 
then  those  that  did  not  die  became  blind.  Too  long  and  too  undiluted  a  diet 
of  gay  life  would  be  no  better  for  the  soul  than  the  undiluted  saccharine  mat- 
ter was  for  the  unfortunate  animal;  and  it  is  a  merciful  arrangement  that, 
after  the  faculties  have  received  sufficient  stimulus  and  the  senses  sufficient 
enjoyment,  puts  an  end  to  it  all  with  the  total  and  arbitrary  change  of  habit 
that  the  Lenten  season  brings.  Then  the  swift  rout  is  succeeded  by  the  quiet 
life,  the  nightly  revel  by  the  morning  walk,  the  call  of  charity,  the  household 
duty,  the  neglected  book,  and  the  performance  of  all  those  little  acts  postponed 
when  the  days  only  waited  on  the  nights  to  bring  the  next  one  round.  Then 
one  has  time  to  recall  the  fact  that  there  are  those  less  favored  by  fate  than 
one's  self;  then  one  has  time  to  put  one's  self  in  one's  enemies'  place  and  see 
what  their  justification  may  be ;  time  to  look  over  one's  own  life,  and  learn 
what  has  been  amiss,  to  make  new  resolutions,  and  indulge  them  a  little 
while  before  beginning  to  break  them ;  then  there  is  time  to  enter  on  the 
search  for  those  less  favored  ones,  if  they  are  not  at  the  door,  and  to  do  what 
may  be  done  toward  striking  the  balance  in  this  life  that  death  will  strike  at 
last  when  the  earth  is  cast  upon  one. 


City  Window  Gardens 

But  there  is  another  gay  season  for  the  city  lover  than  that  of  the  winter 
and  its  routs;  it  is  when  spring  opens,  and  before  people  begin  to  leave  town, 
and  the  flower-boxes  in  varied  windows  are  called  into  bloom.  To  be  sure, 
all  winter  long  the  florists'  windows  are  bowers  of  loveliness,  and  so  are 
many  of  the  windows  of  the  wealthy,  under  which  the  children  of  the  poor 
often  stop  in  admiring  groups.  But  let  the  chill  once  forsake  earth  and  air 
and  even  in  the  poorer  quarters  of  the  town  the  little  boxes  at  the  windows 
begin  to  show  that  nature  will  everywhere  repay  love  and  care,  ftow  to  make 
these  flower-boxes  answer  a  purpose,  and  how  to  make  the  miserable  little 
backyards  beautiful  and  useful,  Miss  Louise  Forester  may  tell  us  in  a  way 
that  shall  perhaps  help  another  young  gardener  in  her  work. 

A  City  Window   Garden. 

I  never  was  the  pretty  one,  said  Louise  Forester,  or  the  bright  one; 
and  I  had  no  accomplishments  and  no  lovers.  And  I  suppose  that  is  what 
made  it  all  surprise  me  so  at  the  end.  Perhaps  I  was  well-looking  enough, 


,30  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

being  healthy;  although  nobody  would  give  me  a  second  glance;  and  I  had 
common  sense,  6f  course;  and  sometimes  I  used  to  wish  the  other  girls  hadn't 
such  a  turn  for  accomplishments,  and  would  help  me  a  little  more  about  the 
house.  But  then  Clara  was  like  somebody  made  of  roses  and  lilies,  so  tall,  so 
slight,  so  fair;  and  Emily  could  read  the  most  difficult  music,  and  could  talk 
about'high  art  in  a  way  that  sounded  to  me  like  Japanese;  and  you  ought  to 
have  heard  Annabel  recite,  and  have  seen  her  go  through  the  thirty-five  ges- 
tures, alarm,  fascination,  listening,  delight,  and  all  the  rest.  I  used  to  think 
it  was  Siddons  come  again,  and  twice  as  great,  and  needing  only  her  oppor- 
tunity—and she  was  always  so  obliging,  and  would  give  you  the  gestures  every 
time  you  asked.  We  all  knew  that  if  Annabel  went  on  the  stage  she  would 
make  the  family  fortunes  and  her  own  everlasting  fame. 

For  you  see  the  family  fortunes  needed  making  or  mending  or  some  other 
very  particular  attention.  We  owned  our  house  and  yard  in  the  narrow  street 
'of  the  crowded  city,  and  took  care  of  ourselves  with  the  money  we  made  by 
taking  in  lodgers-;  and  sometimes  we  had  enough  to  scrimp  along  on,  and 
sometimes  we  didn't,  arid  that  was  oftenest;  and  then  we  got  on  as  we  could, 
pinching  in  our  clothes,  and  pinching  in  our  food,  and  never  going  any- 
where. At  least  /didn't  go  anywhere;  the  girls  used  to  go  to  the  theatre,  or 
down  to  the  sea,  with  the  particular  lover  in  favor  at  the  time — for  most  of 
our  lodgers  were  young  gentlemen  who  came  to  us  with  letters  of  introduc- 
tion, or  came  to  me,  rather;  since,  although  I  was  the  youngest,  I  was  the 
one  that  the  girls  put  forward  and  made  transact  the  business.  They  were 
awfully  shrinking  and  sensitive,  Clara,  and  Annabel,  and  Emily;  and  some- 
how they  always  used  to  feel,  and  so  did  I,  when  we  had  an  unsuccessful  sea- 
son, that  it  was  all  owing  to  my  inefficiency. 

"I'm  sure  we  might  do  better  if  you  made  more  exertion,  Louise,"  Clara 
would  say.  "If  instead  of  wasting  every  spare  moment,  the  way  you  do,  over 
your  absurd  flower  beds  and  boxes,  you  ever  made  a  business  of  talking  with 
the  lodgers  and  getting  them  interested  in  us,  they  might  stay  on.  We  can't 
go  and  talk  about  ourselves ;  but  you,  being  the  ostensible  manager,  could 
often  meet  them,  or  make  them  little  calls  when  you  carry  up  the  monthly 
bills,  instead  of  leaving  those  bills  under  the  door  the  ridiculous  way  you  do, 
and  so  gradually  get  into  conversation,  and  speak  of  our  circumstances,  and 
praise  Emily's  music,  and  Annabel's  elocution,  and  wish  she  could  have  an  en- 
gagement at  the  theatre — not  to  say  anything  that  might  be  said  about  me. 
But  there !  what  do  you  care  about  your  sisters,  so  long  as  you  can  attend  to 
your  flowers?  I  never  saw  such  selfishness.  Sometimes  I  feel  so  enraged 
with  the  things  I  could  go  and  trample  them  down!"  and  her  blue  eyes  flashed 
like  great  angry  sapphires. 


,3a  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

Of  course  this  was  very  unjust;  as  if  I  were  not  doing  all  I  could  for  them 
every  day.  And  I  really  could  have  cried  if  I  hadn't  also  felt  some  indigna- 
tion at  the  talk  about  my  flowers— my  flowers,  the  only  pleasure  or  comfort 
that  I  had.  The  other  girls  had  their  talents,  and  their  flatteries,  their  peo- 
ple to  take  them  to  the  park  or  to  the  concert,  their  own  consciousness,  too,  of 
what  they  were  and  what  they  could  do,  which  was  truly  a  pleasure ;  and  I 
had  nothing  at  all  but  my  flowers.  But  then  the  thought  of  Clara  in  one  of 
her  rages  trampling  down  my  flowers,  and  of  what  it  was  that  might  be  said 
about  her  and  her  tempers,  if  I  chose,  made  me  laugh.  And  so  I  went  out 
of  the  room  quite  gayly ;  and  I  heard  her  say  to  Annabel  before  I  closed  the 
door:  "Any  heart  was  left  out  of  her  composition.  She  hasn't  the  least  atom 
of  one."  And  Annabel  said  nothing,  but  Emily  replied,  "No,  she  doesn't 
care  for  anything  in  the  world  but  her  ridiculous  flowers."  And  Clara  was 
pinning  in  her  belt  a  big  bunch  of  red  roses  that  I  had  just  given  her  off  my 
bush,  and  Emily  was  putting  on  her  hat,  which  was  the  third  hat  she  had  had 
that  year  out  of  my  share  of  the  four  divisions  of  the  income  after  the  house- 
hold expenses  had  been  paid.  But  nobody  ever  thought  of  such  things  as  that ; 
there  was  no  reason  why  I  should  have  new  bonnets  when  I  looked  as  well 
in  the  old  one;  and  why  in  the  world  should  I  not  give  Clara  my  flowers  when 
they  set  off  her  white  beauty  so  through  the  open  window  as  young  Mr.  An- 
nersley  let  himself  in  ? 

But  I  had  a  heart ;  and  Allen  Annersley  knew  it.  For  I  had  talked  with 
him  about  the  girls,  and  had  canvassed  with  him  the  ways  and  means  of  hav- 
ing scholars  found  for  Emily,  or  an  opportunity  for  Annabel  to  show  some 
theatrical  manager  what  she  could  do ;  and  he  kept' a  book  and  music  store 
over  on  the  Avenue,  where  the  theatrical  people  went.  It  was  a  long  time  be- 
fore the  girls  knew  that  he  kept  a  book  and  music  store;  they  insisted  that  he 
was  the  son  of  the  rich  Mr.  Annersley,  on  the  Heights,  who  had  been  a  mem- 
ber of  Congress ;  and  that  he  probably  had  a  whim  of  having  separate  lodg- 
ings of  his  own  because  it  was  English.  And  after  the  blow  fell,  and  they 
knew  he  kept  a  shop,  they  could  not  get  out  of  their  heads  what  they  had  so 
firmly  implanted  there,  the  idea  of  his  belonging  to  something  or  somebody 
on  a  different  scale  of  grandeur.  'He  is,  maybe,  an  Anarchist,"  said  Anna- 
bel, "or  a  Nihilist,  or  a  Socialist  of  some  sort.  And  he  has  left  his  father's 
splendid  surroundings  and  is  seeing  for  himself  what  life,  means  among  those 
that  have  to  earn  their  living." 

"He  visits  a  great  deal  next  door,  and  the  people  there  are  very  well  off," 
said  Clara. 

"There  are  no  people  there  but  the  housekeeper  and  old  gentleman,  and 
he  does  writing  there,"  said  I. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  133 

"You  always  so  contrive  to  dampen  every  enthusiasm,  Louise, "  said  Clara. 

"I'm  sure,"  said  Emily,  "if  I  didn't  think  he  was  something  superior  to 
most  of  our  lodgers  I  should  never  give  him  a  second  thought.  He  is  insig- 
nificant enough  to  be  the  very  pink  of  gentility." 

"How  can  you  talk  so?"  said  Clara.  "As  if  the  aristocracy  hadn't  every 
opportunity  for  physical  perfection." 

"Maybe  they  have,"  said  I.  "But  they  don't  improve  their  opportuni- 
ties. The  fathers  and  mothers  keep  marrying  for  money  and  for  lands,  and 
not  for  love,  or  good  looks  or  intellect,  and  they  are  the  result ;  that's  what 
the  old  housekeeper  says  next  door" 

"How  in  the  world  did  you  know  her?" 

"Oh,  we  made  acquaintance  over  the  garden  wall,  and  she  told  me  that 
Mr.  Annersley  keeps  books  for  her  master,  and  he's  not  only  poor,  but  in  debt 
for  his  stock  in  trade,  and  never  had  any  rich  or  grand  relations." 

"The  idea  of  your  talking  like  that  with  our  neighbors'  servants!  You 
always  did  like  low  company,  Louise!"  said  Emily. 

"But  I  must  say!  How  perfectly  abominable!"  cried  Clara.  **  What  is 
he  here  for,  with  his  false  pretences!  It's  a  regular  imposition — going  about 
with  his  air  of  seclusion,  and  keeping  a  coat  of  arms  in  his  room" 

"Did  you  think  that  was  a  coat  of  arms?"  asked  I.  "Why,  it's  the  di- 
ploma of  a  commercial  school." 

"I  don't  spend  so  much  time  as  you  do,  Louise,  in  the  lodgers*  rooms, 
studying  up  their  belongings.  As  if  I  cared  what  it  was — a  low-bred  person !" 

"It's  very  unkind  of  you  to  talk  so,  Clara,  when  he's  trying  to  do  so 
much  to  help  us.  He  is  going  to  take  Annabel  himself  to  the  manager  of  the 
Avenue  theatre  to-morrow  morning.  And  I'm  to  bring  Emily  to  his  store 
this  afternoon,  when  the  Director  of  the  Symphonies  is  to  hear  her  play,  and 
give  her  pupils  if  he  is  satisfied. " 

"Satisfied!  I  rather  think  there's  no  danger  that  any  one  Mr.  Annersley's 
likely  to  know  will  be  anything  else  but  satisfied  with  Emily's  playing!" 

I  thought  so  myself.  And  I  must  say  I  was  thunderstruck,  after  Emily 
had  played  two  of  her  very  best  pieces  that  afternoon,  to  hear  Mr.  Deboisson, 
the  director,  who,  at  first  sitting  in  dead  silence,  presently  fidgetted  enough 
to  drive  one  wild,  cry  out :  "It  is  utterly  useless.  It  is  utterly  hopeless!  Of 
what  can  the  young  lady  be  thinking?  Has  she  a  mind  to  think  with  at  all? 
It  is  necessary  to  be  plain.  How  can  she  give  lessons  without  talent,  with- 
out technique — with  absolutely  no  qualification!  Her  hand  was  spoiled  in 
the  beginning.  She  has  no  idea  of  the  master's  meaning.  She  cannot  even 
read  the  music.  It  is  childish  play,  Mr.  Annersley!"  and  he  stalked  out  of 
the  shop  as  if  he  had  been  insulted. 


134  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


ALWAYS    A    GAY    SEASON    IN    TOWN. 


But  Emily,  for  whose  sak'e  I  felt  so  badly,  was  not  in  the  least  disturbed. 
"What  a  crusty  old  simpleton!"  she  exclaimed.  "As  if  nobody  knew  any- 
thing but  himself!  And  who  knows  whether  he  does  or  not?"  And  she  rat- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  135 

tied  off  one  of  her  show  pieces  in  great  disdain  of  him,  and  went  home  with, 
me  scolding-  about  Allen  Annersley  all  the  way.  For  if  he  had  taken  the  least 
pains  to  prejudice  Mr.  Deboisson  in  her  favor,  it  would  all  have  been  differ- 
ent, she  said. 

I  must  confess  that,  when  Annabel  came  home  crying,  the  next  noon,  and 
told  us  that  the  manager  had  pronounced  her  efforts  idle,  weakly  amateurish, 
and  out  of  the  question  for  business,  I  felt  as  if  Fate  was  against  us,  and  there 
were  some  gigantic  mistake  somewhere.  And  I  hated  the  manager  even  while 
I  wondered  at  his  blunder,  and  I  cried  a  good  deal  myself  over  my  flowers,  as 
I  trimmed  and  watered  them.  .  But  my  crying  only  made  Emily  indignant. 
"I  should  think  you  thought  our  enemies  were  in  the  right,"  she  cried.  "/ 
don't  cry.  What  such  a  person  as  that  Mr.  Deboisson  says  makes  no  odds  to 
me.  There  are  people  who  say  he's  no  sort  of  a  director!  I  shall  go  on  with  my 
playing  just  the  same,  and  so  will  Annabel  with  her  elocution.  And  you  can 
attend  to  your  precious  flowers  and  not  worry  yourself  about  us!"  But  Anna- 
bel kissed  me  that  night  before  she  went  to  sleep. 

So  I  went  back  to  my  flowers ;  and  they  were  the  greatest  comfort  to  me. 
I  had  a  box  out  of  every  window  in  the  house,  and  when  they  were  full  of 
blossoms  it  did  make  the  house  mightily  attractive;  and  I  used  to  think  that 
was  one  reason  why  the  lodgers  came.  But  when  I  said  so,  the  girls  greeted 
me  with  shouts  of  laughter  and  with  reproaches  for  my  self-conceit ;  and  Clara 
said  she  shouldn't  wonder  if  beautiful  young  women  in  a  house  were  quite  as 
attractive  as  flower-boxes  at  the  windows.  But  all  around  the  edges  of  the 
yard,  at  first,  I  had  my  beds,  and  at  last  I  covered  every  bit  of  space  in  the 
yard  with  them.  I  had  a  world  of  trouble,  though,  because  the  soil  was  so 
hard  and  clayey  there;  and  I  did  question  if  I  were  not  too  selfish  to  live  when 
I  had  a  cart-load  of  fresh  loam  and  some  fertilizers  hauled  on  the  yard  once, 
at  a  time  when  the  girls  had  all  gone  out.  But  I  went  without  butter  and 
sugar  for  two  whole  months,  so  as  to  be  sure  that  I  had  not  wronged  them  in 
doing  it.  And  I  was  sorry  then  that  sugar  was  so  cheap ;  if  it  had  only  been 
a  dollar  a  pound,  I  need  not  have  gone  without  anything  like  as  long. 

Everybody  must  have  some  pleasure,  I  fancy,  and  the  pleasure  I  had  with 
those  flowers  of  mine  was  past  reckoning;  and  sometimes  Mr.  Annersley  came 
home  when  the  girls  were  out,  and  went  about  from  window  to  window  with 
me,  admiring  them  as  much  as  I  did.  He  knew  a  good  deal  about  flowers, 
and  once  in  a  while  he  brought  home  some  rare  little  thing  that  he  had  got  in 
a  greenhouse,  and  I  felt  richer  than  if  it  had  been  a  pearl ;  and  sometimes  I 
found  something  that  I  could  root,  in  an  old  chance  bouquet  thrown  from  her 
carriage  by  some  beauty  going  home  from  a  ball,  maybe.  One  day  the 
friendly  next-door  housekeeper  asked  me,  over  the  fence,  if  I  would  not  like 


,36  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

to  take  a  drive  into  the  woods  with  her  old  master;  and  as  all  the  rooms  were 
in  order,  and  lunch  just  over,  I  was  delighted.  For  the  old  gentleman  and  I 
were  very  good  friends  in  a  small  way,  and  after  we  were  off  the  pavement 
he  began. to  talk  about  my  flowers;  he  was  something  of  a  botanist,  he  said, 
and  he  had  enjoyed  looking  over  in  my  little  yard  and  seeing  me  make  some- 
thing out  of  nothing;  and  he  thought  if  I  were  so  fond  of  flowers  as  all  that, 
I  might  like  a  drive  in  the  woods  (where  I  had  hardly  ever  been),  to  see  some 
of  them  in  their  own  homes,  although  it  was  still  only  the  last  of  May. 

'  9  How  lovely  it  was  in  the  woods!  So  still  and  dark  and  solemn,  with  long 
vistas  away  into  golden  green  sunshine,  and,  when  you  were  wonted  there, 
the  murmuring  whisper  of  the  treetops,  swelling  and  falling  like  the  echo  of 
a  wave  upon  a  distant  shore.  We  left  the  carriage,  and  went  wandering  into 
the  mossy  glades,  I  often  in  advance,  for  my  old  friend  was  too  feeble  to  go 
very  far,  and  I  came  back  to  him  with  this  and  that  treasure  of  the  wild 
growth  that  I  found — white  violets,  anemones,  straw-bells.  "Ah!"  said  he, 
as  I  came  back  once  with  a  strange  and  charming  pink-purple  flower,  as  much 
of  the  wet  black  earth  about  it  as  I  had  been  able  to  take  from  the  ground, 
"now  you  have  a  real  treasure!  That  is  the  Showy  Orchis.  Yes,  lam  glad 
you  have  found  that ;  and  doubtless  there  are  others  here.  It  belongs  to  the  most 
interesting  and  curious  of  all  the  flowers — flowers  that  mimic  animal  life.  Do 
you  know,  there  is  a  damp  shady  corner  'in  your  little  yard,  under  the  pear 
tree,  that  you  can  make  rich  enough  to  grow  this  and  several  others  of  its 
kind.  We  will  come  again  with  a  big  bag  and  fill  it  with  this  peaty  soil." 
And  so  we  did,  several  times,  the  girls  marveling  why  I  liked  driving  out  in 
the  country  with  that  old  creature,  and  not  at  all  admiring  the  weeds  that  I 
brought  back.  And  in  those  times  I  found  many  wonders,  and  among  them 
one  that  he  told  me  was  the  Arethusa,  the  loveliest  purple  thing  alive,  and  a 
Calypso,  too ;  and  he  was  just  as  pleased  as  I  was. 

Sometimes,  once  or  twice,  after  he  heard  about  it,  Allen  took  me  in  the 
street  cars  as  far  as  they  ran,  and  we  walked  the  rest  of  the  way,  although 
somehow  I  never  liked  to  tell  the  girls;  and  it  is  certainly  odd  how  your 
senses  are  trained  and  warned  all  unconsciously,  to  find  what  you  are  looking 
for;  but  I  had  no  sooner  seen  the  old  gentleman's  pleasure  over  my  Arethusa, 
than  what  should  I  spy,  one  sweet  June  day,  but  the  small  white  moccasin 
flower,  and  then  the  big  yellow  one,  and  presently  the  little  yellow  one,  frag- 
rant as  a  tropical  jungle  might  be.  And  I  carried  them  home  to  the  old  gen- 
tleman, with  Allen,  and  he  said  it  was  an  unexampled  find,  all  in  one  day. 
"Three  different  specimens  of  Cypripedium,"  said  he,  "all  in  one  day!  But 
flowers  know  their  lovers.  They  know  to  whom  to  reveal  themselves.  Come 
July,  we  will  go  through  the  woods  again,  and  I  dare  venture  you'll  come 


JOHN  RUSKIN. 
(Bust  by  Sir  Edgar  Boehm,  R.  A.) 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


home  with  the  big" 
pink  ladies'  slip- 
per, a  perfect  bal- 
loon, and  the 
crane -fly,  to 
boot!"  And  of 
course  I  really  did 
— it  would  have 
been  impolite  to 
seem  to  contradict 
him  by  not  doing 
so,  you  know.  And 
I  came  home, 
moreover,  with 
the  greenish- white 
ladies'  tresses,  and 
the  adder's  mouth 
with  its  tiny  green 
blossom,  too;  and 
one  day  I  found 
myself  half  crying 

r  •  4.1. 

for  joy  over  the 
sudden  beauty  of 
the  white  fringed 
orchis;  and  in 

August — there  never  was  such  luck! — I  found  the  yellow  fringed  orchis,  and 
the  ineffably  sweet  purple  fringed  one ;  and  by  that  time  the  little  rich  wet 
corner  of  my  yard  was  a  perfect  chamber  of  jewels  to  me,  with  more  than  the 
treasure-house  of  any  Oriental  king,  with  here  a  quaint  rose-purple  flower 
whose  white  lip  was  spotted  purple,  and  here  a  sweet-scented,  blushing  be- 
gonia. For  the  other  flowers  in  the  yard  had  grown  as  all  common  flowers  do; 
but  these  things  that  I  had  brought  home  from  the  dark,  wild  wet  woods  and 
swamps  seemed  to  belong  to  some  other  planet,  and  to  tell  of  some  other  life 
— some  strange,  fantastic,  foreign  principle  of  life.  They  told  of  another  life 
for  human  beings,  too,  different  from  this  crowded  brick  and  mortar  one.  "A 
life,"  I  said  to  Mr.  Annersley  once,  "that  I  suppose  I  never  shall  have — but  a 
life  on  a  farm  in  the  country  with  one  corner  of  a  garden  running  down  into 
wet  woods."  He  stopped  and  looked  at  me,  quite  gravely,  a  moment.  "Per- 
haps you  will  have  it,"  said  he.  "I  think  it  depends  on  yourself  whether 
you  will  or  not.1' 


BOWERS   OF    LOVELINESS. 


FLOWERS. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

Well,  well, 
those  things  were 
not  all  my  wealth 
by  any  means. 
What  pinks  I 
had,  such  great 
globy  crimson 
carnations  and 
white  ones,  too; 
one  box,  outside 
the  parlor  floor 
lodger's  window, 
was  all  nothing 
else,  and  another 
box  was  full  of 

snowy  sweet  alyssum  and  forget-me-nots  and  mignonette,  and  another 
box  was  all  yellow  oxalis  and  blue  lobelia,  and  just  as  soon  as  they  could 
blow  out  doors  I  had  all  sorts  and  colors  of  double  columbines  shaking 
in  the  wind,  white,  golden,  blue,  purple  and  scarlet,  in  the  box  out  of  Mr. 
Annersley's  window,  and  over  the  sides  another  box  brimming  with  yel- 
low escholtzias  and  marigolds ;  I  had  crimson  cypress  vines,  and  sulphur 
tinted  canary  bird  flowers,  and  nasturtiums  of  all  deep,  rich  impossible  blood- 
colors  streaming ;  and  then  I  had  purple  cinerarias  and  yellow  coreopsis  and 
Star  of  Bethlehem,  all  an  odd  prickly  velvet,  over  its  midnight  blue,  and 
bachelors'  buttons  and  balsams  and  four  o'clocks;  and  there  were  pots  full  of 
violets,  full  of  geraniums,  of  purple  and  carmine  colored  gloxinias ;  and  an 
oleander-tree  that  when  it  bloomed  was  like  a  rosy  sunrise  in  the  room ;  and 
in  the  yard  was  the  corner  of  my  dear  wild  flowers,  and  my  June  peonies,  and 
my  larkspurs,  bluer  than  blue,  and  my  little  rows  of  sweet  peas,  and  morn- 
ing glory  and  scarlet  runners  covering  all  the  sides  of  the  fence,  and  a  vast 
orange  trumpet  flower  and  a  purple  clematis  and  a  wistaria  running  up  the 
back  of  the  house,  and  hollyhocks,  stately  as  old-fashioned  lovely  ladies,  and 
a  dahlia  and  a  prince's  feather,  each  in  their  season,  and  last  of  all  my  white 
chrysanthemums  and  scarlet  salvias — a  perfect  little  wild  garden,  every  inch 
used,  and  not  a  half  an  inch  wasted.  I  used  to  look  out  over  the  yard  in  the 
morning  and  wonder  at  myself,  and  I  used  to  look  up  at  the  house  when  I 
came  home  from  market,  and  think  it  looked  as  if  it  ought  to  be  Paradise  in- 
side. But  it  wasn't.  » 

I  really  don't  know  where  they  all  came  from,   these  darlings  of  mine. 
This  person  gave  me  one,   and  that  person   gave  me  another,  and   some   I 


(140)  FLOWERS  THE  ONLY  PLEASURE  A! 


AND  COMFORT  THAT  I  HAD. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  i4I 

begged,  and  some  I  bought,  and  one,  yes,  one  I  stole.  You'll  never  believe 
how  wicked  I  was.  I  stole  it  walking  in  the  Park.  And  I  tried  so  hard  to  look 
innocent,  passing  the  policeman,  that  I  know  he  knew  I  was  guilty,  and  I  hope 
I  made  up  for  it  afterwards  a  little,  by  scattering  a  whole  handful  of  its  very 
own  seed  in  the  same  spot  in  the  spring;  and  I  do  believe  that  the  great  patch 
you  see  there  like  live  brown  and  gold  velvet  in  the  sun,  came  from  those  iden- 
tical seeds. 

Those  seeds,  and  the  seeds  of  the  others,  too,  gave  me  no  end  of  trouble, 
by  the  way ;  for  people  all  up  and  down  the  street,  and  people  who  passed  that 
jvay,  strangers,  too,  and  all  our  acquaintances  of  course,  used  to  come  and  beg 
me  for  some  of  the  seed  of  this,  that,  or  the  other.  And  it  grew  to  be  a  real 
nuisance,  it  took  so  much  of  my  time,  and  I  was  afraid,  too,  I  would  have 
none  left  for  myself.  I  was  doing  some  up  to  give  away  one  day,  when  Mr. 
Annersley  came  in.  "It  isn't  generosity  at  all,"  I  said.  "I  don't  like  to  do 
it.  I  wouldn't  mind  so  much,  though,  if  I  thought  they  really  wanted  them. 
But  it's  only  a  freak,  because  our  flowers  look  so  pretty.  I  don't  believe 
they'll  ever  come  to  anything.  They're  just  wasted." 

"Sell  them,  then.  Don't  give  them  away.  It  will  amount  to  something 
in  the  year." 

_  "Oh  dear,  no — I  should  be  ashamed.  "Ashamed  of  turning  an  honest 
penny?  I'm  not.'1  "But  they're  not  worth  a  penny. ''  "Oh  yes,. they  are. 
"Why,  you  know  there  are  some  establishments  for  nothing  else  than  the  sale 
of  flower  seeds.  Do  them  up  in  neat  packages,  and  I'll  take  them  to  the  store. 
Those  that  want  them  will  want  them  enough  to  pay  for  them.  And  they 
won't  be  wasted,  either."  I  should  never  have  done  it,  you  see,  but  for  him; 
he  was  always  looking  out  for  my  interest  that  way.  And  what  did  I  see 
the  next  week  but  a  great  black  and  white  placard  in  the  shop  window: 
"Flower  seeds  from  Miss  Forester. "  The  girls  were  so  outraged!  But  he 
didn't  take  the  placard  down  for  all  that;  and  I  kept  putting  up  and  sending 
round  to  him  my  flower  seeds  as  fast  as  they  ripened,  and  in  the  late  spring 
he  handed  me  more  money  than  I  would  believe  could  come  from  their  sale. 

One  way  and  another,  all  the  time,  the  house  gradually  became  an  actual 
bowei.  Once  some  men  came  staggering  in,  not  looking  at  all  like  men,  but 
more  like  Birnam  Wood,  and  they  carried  between  them  an  immense  azalia 
bush,  a  mound  of  snow  and  sweetness,  with  the  compliments  of  the  old  gen- 
tleman next  door.  The  girls  said  of  course  it  couldn't  be  for  me;  but  as  they' 
couldn't  make  up  their  minds  for  which  one  of  them  it  was,  it  didn't  matter; 
and  I  returned  thanks,  and  did  it  so  carefully  not  to  mention  any  names,  that 
Mr.  Annersley,  who  was  writing  in  there,  looked  up  at  me  with  a  laugh  in  his 
brown  eyes,  and  the  old  gentleman  said,  "You're  a  little  girl  as  sweet  as  those 


I42  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

flowers  themselves,  and  I  know  somebody  else  that  thinks  so."     And  then  I 
ran  away. 

A  few  days  after  that  Mr.  Annersley  bought  me  a  tiny  Southern  orchid, 
just  the  least  flower  of  one,  an  air-plant  that  had  no  root,  and  which  there 
couldn't  be  any  doubt  he  gave  to  me.  "There's  a  fortune  in  those  things," 
he  said,  "although  I  fail  to  understand  why.  And  if  you  would  like,  Miss 
Louise,  there's  an  exhibition  of  orchids  to-morrow,  and  we  might  see  them 
together,  if  you  will." 

If  I  would !  Of  course  I  would.  And  I  hurried  along  with  him  next  day, 
my  pleasure  and  ardor  not  at  all  abated  by  the  wonder  and  disbelief  and  con- 
tempt of  the  girls,  whom  he  didn't  ask,  although  I  should  have  been  delighted 
if  he  had. 

But  I  thought  no  more  of  the  girls  when  I  was  once  in  the  hall  of  the  ex- 
hibition. The  anteroom,  full  of  startled  cyclamens,  plats  of  primroses,  dishes 
of  pansies,  and  great  jacqueminots  with  half -yard  long  stems,  was  nothing  be- 
side this  place  of  enchantment  where,  tier  over  tier,  rose  the  weird,  wondrous 
creatures  with  their  threads  and  filaments  sailing  on  the  air,  with  all  their 
beauty  and  diablerie,  like  flowers  and  serpents  speaking  together,  each  uncer- 
tain if  it  were  not  the  other.  "They  resemble,  more  than  anything  else,  the 
floral  ornament  of  the  cinque-cento  painting  and  carving,"  said  Allen.  "You 
think  it  is  a  fish,  with  all  its  scales  and  contours  and  colors,  and  suddenly  it 
is  a  flower.  Nature  had  done  with  work  when  she  made  them  and  was  in  a 
mood  of  wanton  freak  and  frolic." 

"See  that  upper  one  over  there,"  I  said.  "It  is  a  flower — but  how  it  is 
trying  to  be  a  bird ! ' ' 

"Perhaps  it  is  a  bird,"  he  answered,  "that  has  just  succeeded  in  becom- 
ing a  flower  " 

"And  there  are  others  in  disguise,  trying  not  to  seem  the  flowers  they 
are,  but  other  flowers.  If  they  were  not  so  cool,  so  calm,  so  refined,  wouldn't 
you  say  they  were  full  of  the  wildest  fun,  playing  surprises  and  making  jests?" 

"There  is  a  sort  of  dignity  through  it  all,  though,  as  if  they  were  of  a 
separate  order  of  creation,  and  were  only  obedient  to  the  elfin  law  of  their  be- 
ing. Perhaps  the  dignity  takes  root  in  their  prices,"  he  added  gayly. 

"Are  they  dear?" 

"Immensely  so.  This  collection  is  worth  thousands  and  thousands  of 
dollars.  They  outweigh  gold  in  preciousness. " 

"Oh!"  and  the  falling  accent  in  my  voice,  I  suppose,  told  him  the  story 
of  my  little  secret  hope  of  wearing  my  old  gown  and  boots  another  while,  and 
getting  some  bulb  or  shoot  or  seed  among  them  all.  "Oh,  that  caps  the 
whole!"  I  exclaimed.  "That  just  shows  they  are  the  very  spirits  of  flowers, 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 
-»-•  * 


SO    STILL    AND    DARK    AND    SOLEMN. 

to  be  capable  of  such  work  as  outweighing  gold.  Perhaps  they  are  ghosts  of 
the  dead  and  gone  gnomes  and  trolls  who  handle  the  gold  and  gems  in  the 
heart  of  the  hills  in  the  fairy  stories.  I  suppose  that  gnomes  could  have 
ghosts.  See  that  scarlet  fellow  with  the  white  spathe — they  are  the  witches 
and  warlocks  of  flowers.  How  I  should  like  to  look  in  here  when  the  moon 


144 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


shines  to-ni  ght 
through  the  great  win- 
dows, and  see  them  at 
their  wild  play  all 
alone!  If  one  only 
had  ears  fine  enough 
to  hear  their  lan- 
guage!" 

"Do  you  know," 
said  he,  suddenly  stop- 
ping and  turning  to- 
ward me,  for  we  were 
in  a  corner  by  our- 
selves, "that  you  have 
something  in  common 
with  these  orchids? 
Yesterday  a  little  un- 
noticeable  body,  sud- 
denly something  has 
clothed  you  to-day 
with  a  beauty  lovelier 
than  Clara's.  What 
freak  was  Nature  play- 
ing when  she  gave  you 
this  color,  this  smile, 
this  sparkle,  to  hide 
yesterday  and  come 
to-morrow?" 

4 'Oh,  hush,  hush!" 
I  said.  "You  musn't 
speak, to  me  so.  No- 
body ever  speaks  to 
me  so.  They  talk  so 
to  the  other  girls. 
They  don't  talk  so  to 
me." 

"I  can  think  it  just  the  same,  can't  I?",  he  said,  smiling.  "There  you 
go  again.  The  enthusiasm  has  died  down,  the  flame  is  wrapped  in  gray 
smoke,  the  cloud  has  come  over  the  sun ;  the  great  shining  orchid  that  you 
were,  with  your  illumined  eyes  and  changing  blush  a  moment  ago,  has  turned 


A  BOX  OUT  OF  EVERY  WINDOW   IN  THE  HOUSE. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 


US 


"back  and  become 
the  little  forget-me- 
not.  But  I  have 
seen  it  before,  many 
a  time,  as  I  looked 
at  you  out  of  the 
windows  next  door, 
when  you  found  one 
of  your  new  plants 
in  bloom." 

"I — I  am  sorry 
you  said  so,"  I 
murmured.  ' '  For 
now — perhaps  I 
shall  never  feel 
quite  free  again 
when — when  I'm 
there." 

"Then      I     must 
never  look   at   you 
out     there     again, 
and   that   would  be 
a  good   deal    more 
than    I    would   like 
to    deprive   myself 
of,"     he     said.      "So   you 
think    I    am   jesting?"     he 
said,    all  his  old    barriers 
suddenly  seeming  to  give 
way.  "Look  up  at  me,  look 
tip  at  me  a  moment.     Why 
do    you    keep    those  blue 
eyes  veiled  so?     Lift  those 
white    lids    just     for   one 
swift,     shy   glance,    one 

sweet  shy  glance,  and  see  if  I  am  not  in  earnest."  And  I  tried  to,  and  my 
lip  quivered;  but  determined  not  to  yield  I  did  raise  my  eyes,  and  out  spurted 
the  tears.  "Louise!"  he  exclaimed,  but  under  his  breath,  and  standing  be- 
tween me  and  the  crowd  beyond.  "My  darling,  I  didn't  dream  I  was  hurt- 
ing you!  Do  you  suppose  I  would  hurt  the  thing  I  love  best  in  the  world?" 


TRESSES,   ETC. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


"You  love  best 
in  the  world!"  I 
repeated,  in 
amazement,  look- 
ing up  at  him. 
through  all  my 
tears  and  in  spite 
of  them. 

"Yes,"  he 
said.  "Does  that 
surprise  you?  It 
ought  not.  I 
have  always 
wanted  to  tell 
you  when  I  felt 
I  might.  Does 
it  surprise  you? 
Why,  who  is  it 
that  you  love 
best  in  the 
world?"  he  ask- 
ed, quickly. 

"You!"  I  said, 
before  I  thought 
a  word.  And 
then,  when  in  a 
moment  I  could 
have  cried  out  at 
myself,  and 
would  have  turn- 
ed and  tried  per- 
haps to  run  away, 
"That  is  all 
right  then,"  he 
said,  coolly.  And 
he  took  my  hand 
and  tucked  it 

tinder  his  arm  in  a  perfectly  matter-of-fact  way,  and  walked  off  with  me. 
"You  must  have  known  I  loved  you,"  he  said.  "I  never  doubted  that  you 
loved  me.  After  my  stock  is  paid  for  and  the  day  for  our  marriage  is 


THE  CORNER  OF  MY  DEAR  WILD  FLOWERS. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  147 

fixed,  I  shall  tell  you  all  I  have  thought  about  you  for  this  long  time  as  I 
have  seen  you  going  and  coming.  I  shall  tell  you  I  was  always  afraid  you 
would  put  out  wings  like  any  other  angel,  and  flyaway  and  leave  me  desolate." 

"I — I  think  you  musn't— say  any  more  to  me— just  now,"  I  murmured. 
"I  am  afraid  I— I  shall  do  something— silly. " 

"Whatever  you  do,"  answered  he,  "will  be  the  best  and  wisest  thing  a 
woman  could  do.  But  come!  I've  a  greater  surprise  than  this  in  store  for 
you.  For  I  believe  you  knew  this  all  the  time" 

"I — I— never  dreamed  of  it!  "  I  answered,  catching  my  breath,  for  fear 
it  would  turn  into  a  sob  of  joy.  And  just  then  we  stopped  before  some  shelves 
clothed  in  moss,  and  there,  in  several  trays,  in  pots  and  baskets,  were  some 
wild  flowers  which  I  couldn't  see,  and  a  large  card  which  I  couldn't  read,  for 
the  unshed  tears  and  doubles  of  everything,  dancing  like  sparks  before  my 
eyes.  "I  will  read  it  for  you  then,  my  darling,"  he  said.  "  'Prize  for  the 
best  collection  of  native  specimens  of  Orchidaceae,  Miss  Louise  Forester, 
fifty  dollars. '  The  old  housekeeper  and  I  took  them  up  the  moment  you 
went  in  after  watering  them. ' ' 

"I — I  think  I  must  go  home,"  I  half  sobbed  "It  is  all  too  much  for  me. 
I  don't  know  what  the  girls  will  say.'' 

»  "I  know  what  the  president  and  manager  of  the  Horticultural  Society 
will  say, "  he  exclaimed.  "They  will  say :  'Buy  your  flower  seeds  of  Miss 
Louise  Forester,  at  Mr.  Annersley's  book  and  music  store.'  And  people 
will  flock  to  buy  at  once,  you  see  if  they  don't!  so  many  of  them  that  it  will 
crowd  out  all  the  books  and  music.  And  our  fortunes  will  be  made  in  the 
twinkling  of  a  snap-dragon  seed!"  And  so  he  ran  on,  to  direct  the  current 
of  my  too  intense  feeling.  And  while  he  was  talking,  there  they  were  all 
about  me,  the  president,  and  managers,  and  the  board  of  ladies,  saying  all 
sorts  of  pleasant  things  about  my  pretty  orchises,  not  all  of  which,  of  course, 
were  in  bloom,  asking  me  questions,  and  waiting  for  my  replies.  And  be- 
fore I  was  conscious  of  it,  I  was  talking  with  them  just  as  easily  as  with  the 
friendly  housekeeper,  and  telling  them  all  the  little  I  knew.  "And  I  was 
proud  of  you,"  said  Allen,  when  on  the  way  home.  "There  wasn't  one  among 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


them  knew  as  much  as  you  did,  and  nobody  half 
so  modest!  You  were  like  a  little  encyclopaedia 
made  easy.  The  president  said  you  were  already 
a  botanist  who  would  take  rank  anywhere." 

"It's  the  dear  old  gentleman  who  taught 
me,"  I  said.  And  then  the  house  was  near;  and 
it  seemed  to  lift  itself  so  strangely  and  look  so 
like  another  place,  that  at  first  I  couldn't  make 

out  what  was  the  matter.  "Oh,  the  whole  world  has  been  changed,  Allen!" 
I  said.  And  he  drew  me  inside  the  door,  and  in  the  dark  hall  he  folded  me 
close  in  his  dear  arms  and  gave  me  one  long  deep  kiss — the  first  lover's  kiss  I 
had  ever  had,  the  first  kiss,  except  for  Annabel's,  that  had  ever  touched  my 
lips  since  my  dear  mother  died. 

It  seemed  to  me  the  next  day  as  if  everything  were  happening  at  once.  I 
had  hardly  told  the  amazed  girls  about  my  prize,  and  I  was  going  round  the 
house  in  my  light-hearted,  happy  maze,  singing  with  a  whole  heart  in  my 
songs,  when  the  dear  old  gentleman  next  door  sent  for  me  to  come  in.  Allen 
was  there,  and  we  stayed  for  an  hour  or  two,  and  a  lawyer  came,  and  we  signed 
our  names  to  papers,  and  I  don't  know  what  and  all. 

When  I«came  back  Annabel  was  waiting  for  me.  "I've  been  making 
you  a  bonnet,"  said  she.  "It  made  me  ashamed  to  see  you  yesterday,  and 
we  flaunting  about  in  all  the  finery  we  could  catch." 

"I  am  so  glad  that  you  did  it,  Annabel,  before  you  knew,"  I  said 
"Knew  what?" 

"That  I  am  going  to  be  married — and  to  live  in  the  country,  ten  miies 
from  here,  on  a  little  farm  that  the  old  gentleman  is  to  let  us  have  till  we  can 
pay  for  it.  A  flower  farm  it  is  to  be,  and  the  Horticultural  Society  will  sell 
my  seeds  for  me.  And  as  soon  as  we  get  it  well  under  way  Allen  will  give 
up  his  other  business,  and  we  shall  do  nothing  else  than  raise  and  sell  flower 


, 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

seeds.  And  we 
expect  to  pay 
for  the  place, 
and  create  a 
greatbusiness, 
and  make  our 
fortune  and 
mak  e,  be- 
sides, oh, 
such  great  and 
beautiful  flow- 
ers by  giving 
our  whole  souls  to  it  and 
having  all  out-doors  to 
do  it  in!" 

'Oh,  Louise!"  she 
cried.  "What  a  life  you 
are  going  to  live !  Who 
would  have  thought  of  it 
from  just  the  beginning 
of  those  window-boxes 
and  tiny  beds  in  the 
yard?  Oh,  it  isn't  be- 
cause of  the  flowers  only 
— it's  because  you  were 
in  earnest  and  never 
thought  of  yourself! 
And  now  you  are  going 
to  be  so  happy" 

' '  Would  you  like  to 
come  with  me?"  I  said.      "Clara  and 
Emily  can  take  care  of  the  house  and 
themselves  here,  and  you  can  help  me  enough  to 
have  a  salary,  presently,  if  all  goes  right.     Allen 
said   something  about  it,    his  very  self."     And  then  An- 
nabel flung  her  arms  about  me  and  we  both  cried  together 
— for  all  at  once  I  felt  that  I  had  found  a  sister  as  well  as  a  lover.    And 
tell  you  I  took  care  never  to  lose  her. 

But  you  ought  to  see  my  garden  now — no  little  back  yard  at  all,  but 
of  blossom.     There  is  one  half-acre  of  tuberoses  alone  that  drives  the 


T49 


I  can 

acres 
wind 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


THIS    PLACE    OF    ENCHANTMENT. 


before  it  heavy  with  delicidhisness.  And  there,  at  another  season,  are  the 
roses,  such  roses!  they  climb  over  walls  and  poles  and  trellises,  and  they  fill 
whole  garden  plots,  drift-white,  and  maiden-blush,  and  cream,  and  crimson 
red,  and  purple  red  to  blackness.  And  sometimes,  in  late  spring,  when  Al- 
len and  I  go  out  and  stand  in  the  middle  of  a  bed  of  violets,  and  the  satiating 
sweetness  rises  round  us  in  heavenly  clouds,  we  feel,  not  as  if  we  were  in  a  lit- 
tle flower  seed  farm  that  had  paid  for  itself  and  was  making  a  large  income, 
but  as  if  we  were  in  the  very  heart  and  center  itself  of  the  Garden  of  Eden ! 


STEPPING   STONED  TO   HAPPINESS.  151 


CHAPTER  .SIXTH. 


Under  Green  Boughs. 


No  tears 
Dim  the  sweet  look  that  Nature  wears. 

— Longfellow. 

And  not  from  Nature  up  to  Nature's  God, 

But  down  from  Nature's  God  look  Nature  through. 

— R.  Montgomery. 

I  have  heard  the  mavis  singing 

Its  love-song  to  the  morn, 
I've  seen  the  dew-drop  clinging 

To  the  rose  just  newly  born. 

— Charles  Jeffreys. 

The  meanest  floweret  of  the  vale, 

The    simplest  note  that  swells  the  gale, 

The  common  sun,  the  air,  the  skies, 

To  him  were  opening  Paradise. 

— Gray. 

The  breeze  of  Nature  stirring  in  his  souL 

—  Wordsworth. 

O  Love !  what  hours  were  thine  and  mine, 
In  lands  of  palm  and  Southern  pine; 
In  lands  of  palm,  of  orange  blossom, 
Of  olive,  aloe,  and  maize  and  vine ! 

—  Tennyson. 

They  who  best  cherish  this  family  tradition,  and  this  family  feeling,  are 
they  who  most  value  the  home  and  its  influences  and  are  eager  to  make  it 
all  that  is  good  for  its  various  members.  For  a  home  is  the  best  of  all  the 
stepping  stones  to  happiness.  Where  the  home  may  be  is  a  matter  of  compara- 
tively little  importance  beside  the  character  of  the  home  itself.  Wherever  it 
is,  in  city  or  in  country,  its  occupants  will  probably  congratulate  themselves 
that  their  lives  are  better  spent  than  if  it  were  in  the  other  place.  There  is 
so  much  less  to  distract  the  attention  and  so  much  more  to  help  toward  the 
concentration  of  thought  in  the  loneliness  of  rural  regions  that  people  there  are 


oTEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

wont  to  think  the 
absence  of  frivol- 
ity among  them 
is  a  question  past 
dispute,  although 
perhaps     a     cir- 
cumstance       o  n 
which  they  have 
no  right  to  pride 
themselves,  since 
they   can   hardly 
claim  a  voluntary 
agency     in     this 
affair  of  the  favor 
of       Providence, 
but  which,  if  not 
to  be  set  down  to- 
their  credit,  cer- 
tainly is  to  their 
advantage.         In 
the      city,     they 
reason,    are    the 
unceasing  enter- 
tainments of   all 
sorts,   complicat- 
ed   and    simple, 
lectures,      c  o  n  - 
certs,      theatres, 
operas,       crowds 
on     Sundays    at 
the  churches 
where  this  choice 
singer    or     that 

draws  a  large  salary,  picture  stores,  galleries,  libraries,  exhibitions  of  things 
from  the  four  corners  of  the  earth,  morning  calls,  strolls  down  thoroughfares 
as  good  as  foreign  lands,  dinner  parties,  afternoon  teas,  one  perpetual  round 
of  change  and  excitement,  not  the  least  part  of  which  is  the  mere  observation 
of  the  throngs  that  line  the  streets,  with  the  equipages  and  the  way-farers — 
streets  which  to  the  rustic  are  a  theatrical  entertainment  in  themselves,  of 
which  one  is  not  immediately  wearied ;  and  in  the  mean  time  when  life  in 


THE    THEATER    FOYER. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


'53 


the  country  has  subsided  to  quiet   sleep,  it  is  under  full  headway  in  the  town 
for  hours  afterward. 


Comparative  Views  of  Town  and  Country. 

In  the  country,  on  the  other  hand,  the  reasoner  continues,  how  few  are 
the  changes  and  how  necessarily  less  frittered  are  time  and  attention  by  the 
need  and  habit  of  giving  a  thought  to  this  and  a  thought  to  the  other.  All 
public  entertainments,  with  the  exception  of  a  possible  weekly  lyceum  course, 
are  things  unknown,  and  church-going  arid  evening  meeting  and  preparatory 
lecture  are  the  only  general  assemblages.  Social  calls  are  but  half-yearly  or- 
dinations, although  neighbors  may  go  across  lots  of  a  winter  evening  to  be 
regaled  with  new  cider  and  apples,  or  loiter  a  half -hour  or  so  about  each  other's 
gates  in  the  summer  dark  before  the  nine-o'clock  bell  rings  everybody  into 
bed  with  its  remembrance  of  the  ancient  curfew.  The  missionary  meeting 
and  sewing-circle  exist ;  but  what  are  gatherings  taking  place  once  a  fort- 
night or  once  a  month,  where  every  one  is  expected  to  be  busy,  where  a  good 
book  is  read,  or  where  there  is  time  for  solid  conversation,  compared  to  the 
kettledrums  and  high  teas  of  every  day  in  the  city  life,  where  to  get  into  a 
serious  talk  would  be  bad  taste  ?  For  what  time  there  is  left  to  the  country 
resident  after  these  mild  pleasures — and  they  occupy  but  a  small  fraction — 
there  is  an  unremitting  industry  requisite  for  these  who,  living  away  from 
the  emporiums  in  which  every  desire  may  be  gratified  for  money,  have  to 
do  everything  for  themselves,  and  have  not  the  money  for  such  gratification 
anyway,  if  the  rest  were  equal.  .  A  new  book  there  is  not  to  be  thrown  aside 
and  succeeded  by  a  newer  after  a  light  skimming;  if  it  is  anything  to  read 
at  all,  it  is  something  to  exhaust,  to  repeat,  to  talk  about  for  a  goodly  season; 
and  news  is  so  rare  that  when  anything  takes  place,  not  only  the  history  of 


'54 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


the  actors  is 
their  grand - 
countryman 
the  frivoli- 
claim  of  be- 
t  h  a  n  those 


considered,  but  that  of  their  fathers  and 
fathers.  On  the  whole,  it  seems  to  the 
as  if  there  was  up  time  in  his  life  for 
ties,  and  that  he  has  a  right  to  the 
ing  more  serious  and  more  in  earnest 
bred  among  the  distractions  of  cities. 


Yet  again,  the 
dwellers  in  cities 
will  have  some- 
thing to  say  for 
themselves,  and 
be  heard  to  set  up 
the  same  claim. 
In  the  first  place 
they  will  urge  on 
their  side,  possi- 
bly, the  preposter- 

ousness  of  there  being  any  distraction  for  them  in  the  throng  of  the  city 
streets;  they  were  born  among  them;  they  have  been  familiar  with  them 


- 
•  - 


THE    SWEET    LOOK    THAT    NATURE    WEARS. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  155 

since  the  day  they  could  walk  alone;  every  alteration  in  them  has  come 
gradually,  and  stamped  itself  on  their  consciousness  without  any  intel- 
lectual effort  on  their  part,  or  any  consequent  waste  of  thought;  the 
unending  processions  in  those  streets  occupy  no  more  of  their  attention 
than  the  pebbles  of  the  country  read  do  that  of  the  rustics.  If,  to 
go  on,  the  day  begins  later  and  prolongs  itself  later  in  the  city,  the  amount  of 
time  compassed  is  equal,  and  the  possibilities  of  time  greater.  As  for  the 
strolls  and  rides  and  the  shopping,  they  have  their  rural  equivalents,  or 
ought  to  have,  as  they  merely  belong  to  the  concerns  of  health  or  of  neces- 
sary life.  For  other  things,  such  as  the  routs  and  balls  and  visits,  it  is  but  a 
limited  class  that  have  them  to  enjoy,  and  with  those  that  do  have  them  they 
are  a  sort  of  routine,  after  all,  which  from  continued  custom  requires  cer- 
tainly little  expenditure  of  brain  tissue,  if  they  do  require  expenditure  of 
time.  As  the  conjurer  Houdin,  from  long  practice,  could  tell  every  article  in 
a  show-window  at  a  single  glance,  and  without  conscious  endeavor  at  all,  so 
the  persons  frequenting  these  entertainments  do  it  as  a  stale  custom;  they 
give  so  much  time  and  so  much  thought,  and  no  more,  and  the  rest  is  left 
free  for  earnest  work ;  while  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  many  of  the  entertain- 
ments are  but  a  stimulus  to  earnest  work,  are  creators  of  thought,  kindlers  of 
ambition,  rest  and  refreshment  after  effort,  and  far  from  feeders  of  frivolity 
to  those  who  use  them  as  a  means  and  not  an  end.  *• 

Certainly  great  things  are  done  in  the  cities,  as  it  has  already  been  said  in 
these  pages;  great  ideas  are  started  there,  great  works  go  forward  there,  great 
charities  have  their  origin  and  bring  about  their  wonderful  results  there,  and 
it  takes  people  with  but  little  of  the  frivolous  about  them  to  attend  to  them 
all.  And  when  we  come  to  individual  life  we  shall  find  that  there  is  hardly 
any  girl  in  the  city  who  has  finished  her  direct  attendance  at  school  who  is 
not  still  pursuing  some  special  study,  and  that  far  from  superficially,  but  in 


I56  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

earnest,  either  because  her  interest  is  deep,  or  because  some  rivalry  has 
spurred  it,  or  because  it  is  the  custom  in  her  set;  or  who  is  not  engaged  in 
personal  charities  that  require  her  careful  oversight,  and  use  half  her  day  in 
deeds  that  are  neither  vain  nor  frivolous,  nor  unnecessary  to  the  health  of  the 

world. 

The  measure  of  human  nature  is  probably  the  same  wherever  it  is  found, 
ana  the  men  and  women  of  the  country  are  not  very  different  from  those  of 
the  town.  Condemnation  of  either  by  the  other  is  the  most  frivolous  affair 
that  either  encourages,  while  it  will  surely  do  neither  of  them  any  harm  if  a 
serious  rivalry  should  exist  between  them  as  to  who  shall  make  the  most  of 
life,  and  leave  the  world  better  behind  him.  For  our  own  part,  were  we  called 
to  decide  the  dispute,  since  the  farm  is  needed  for  the  city  and  the  city  for 
the  farm,  we  would  let  them  balance  the  matter  between  them  and  would 
decide  for  the  golden  mean — that  is — home  near  a  large  suburban  town, 
not  too  remote  from  a  great  city  on  occasions,  but  sufficiently  remote  to  let 
one  enjoy  rural  life  and  indulge  the  love  of  nature. 


The  Love  of  Nature. 

Indeed,  is  not  this  love  of  nature  itself  a  stepping  stone  to  happiness? 
Few  things  so  soften  the  asperities  of  life.  Let  other  things  go  awry,  let 
the  roof  leak,  the  dinner  burn,  the  goodman  grumble,  and  after  a  glance  from 
the  window  at  some  lovely  landscape  that  chances  to  lie  below — a  good  long 
gaze  in  which  the  beauty  works  its  spell  upon  the  soul — all  the  troubles  seem 
light  and  easily  to  be  borne:  that  is,  if  one  really  loves  nature,  and  does  not 
merely  pretend  to  do  so.  They  with  whom  the  love  of  nature  is  a  passion 
find  her  rising  to  meet  them  in  all  their  joys,  to  quiet  them  in  all  their  vexa- 
tions, to  solace  them  in  all  their  sorrows.  "What  I  wanted  when  my  father 
died,"  said  a  musician,  "was  to  hear  a  certain  piece  of  music.  If  I  could  have 
heard  that,  it  would  have  seemed  like  a  precious  friend  comforting  me.  But 
I  could  not,  and  so  I  was  desolate,  and  my  heart  fed  on  itself. "  And  it  is  just 
so  with  the  love  of  nature  in  any  similar  stress.  The  soft  meadow  scene  of 
a  champaign  country,  where  the  purple  vapors  veil  the  distant  edges,  and  the 
sunbeams  slant  across  them  with  that  straight-cutting  line  in  which  light  pen- 
etrates a  jewel ;  the  infinite  joy  of  the  wide  sea  scene,  with  the  everlasting 
play  of  its  frolicking  waves  by  day,  its  infinite  melancholy,  tenderness,  and 
mystery  by  night;  the  magnificent  inclosure  of  the  mountains,  lifting  their 
heads  into  heaven  to  catch  the  light  and  translate  it  for  the  beholder,  com- 
panions of  the  stars  and  yet  companions  of  ourselves — all  these  speak  to  their 


THE  LONELINESS  OF  RURAL  REGIONS. 


A  SEWING  CIRCLE. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  159 


I 


lover  as  some  delightful  friend  might  speak,  as  some  great  all-wise  friend,  in- 
deed, sometimes  the  very  voice  of  God  Himself.  They  comfort  insensibly, 
when  comfort  is  needed,  too,  not  by  the  mere  pleasure  of  the  eye,  but,  as 
beauty  always  must,  by  composing  and  resting,  by  silent  influence,  and  by  the 
inevitable  consciousness  that  the  existence  of  such  a  thing  shows  an  ever-liv- 
ing and  ever-loving  care;  and  beholding  the  scene  so  perfect,  it  would  seem 
as  if  we  were,  almost  unaware  to  ourselves,  called  upon  by  all  these  viewless 
forces  to  do  our  best  toward  perfection,  too.  We  have  known  a  person,  very 
sensitive  to  all  these  forces,  who  in  a  season  of  religious  despair  was  made 
whole  merely  by  a  winter's  walk  in  the  country,  looking  toward  sunset,  where 
the  snow-white  and  innocent  fields  grew  faintly  rosy  and  smiling,  and  a  ruddy 
orange  lay  low  in  the  west,  like  a  vast  hearth-fire,  and  in  its  suggestion  of 
warmth  and  home  and  shelter,  made  the  sufferer  in  some  way  feel  that  the 
universe  was  under  care,  and  every  atom  of  it  was  regarded  as  precious  and 
not  to  be  spared  by  its  Maker.  And  are  we  not,  all  of  us,  atoms  in  it  ? 

And  if  the  lovers  of  nature  can  be  satisfied  in  such  wise  in  the  time  when 
her  pictorial  and  delightsome  effects  are  less  easy  to  be  felt,  what  joy  can  they 
experience  in  the  other  seasons,  when  she  is  an  utter  spendthrift  of  beauty, 
like  a  player  at  whist  who  plays  trumps  because  he  has  nothing  else  at  all  in 
his  hand !  What  a  luxury  of  life  is  theirs  in  the  spring,  when  the  callow  wil- 
lows make  a  sort  of  green  sunshine  near  and  far,  and  scatter  their  delicate 
fragrance  through  the  land ;  in  the  summer,  when  the  boat  slips  along  the 
dark  shadow  of  the  branch-hung  bank,  the  shadow  full  of  deep  olive  tints, 
with  now  a  yellow  star-glint  beneath,  and  a  heaven  of  stars  bright  as  the 
brede  of  some  immortal  scarf  hung  overhead ;  or  in  the  fall,  when  the  sun 
shines  through  the  gilded  and  reddened  leaves  and  transfigures  them  to  flame, 
and  earth  seems  a  vast  garden  of  brilliant  bloom,  whose  vividness  is  only 
softened  by  the  tender  hazes  everywhere  dropping  and  folding  about  it!  If 
all  the  ineffable  charm  of  such  scenes  will  not,  indeed,  pluck  out  a  rooted 
*  sorrow,  it  will,  at  all  events,  if  once  really  felt,  go  far  towards  alleviating  the 
sorrow,  acting  perhaps  as  chloroform  is  said  to  do  in  spasmodic  diseases,  ob- 
taining possession  of  the  brain  first,  and  rendering  it  in  some  way  less  acute 
to  the  touch  of  the  other. 


Michelet's  Twilight  Experience. 

To  those  who  sincerely  and  understandingly  cherish  these  influences  of 
nature,  with  whom  the  love  is  no  intellectual  pretense,  she  assumes  a  real 
personality — a  personality  so  strange  that  sometimes  when  night  or  twilight 
is  superadded,  this  thing  that  is  so  dear  to  us  puts  on  a  mystery  that  becomes 


160  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

weird  and  uncanny,  as  if  we  were  visited  by  the  ghost  of  one  we  loved.  "La 
petite  chaine,  par  exemple,  qu'on  appelle  le  Rocher  d'Avon,  nousavaitsalues 
le  matin,  dans  la.senteur  des  bruyeres,  de  la  plus  gaie  lumieredel'aube,  d'une 
ravissante  aurore  qui  rosait  le  gres;  tout  semblait  sourire  et  s'harmoniser  aux 
Etudes  innocentes  d'une  ame  poetique  et  pieuse.  Le  soir,  nous  y  retour- 
nons,  mais  la  fee  fantasque  a  change.  Ces  pins  qui  nous  accueillircnt  sous 
leur  ombrelle  legere,  devenus  tout  a  coup  sauvages,  ils  roulent  des  bruits 
Granges,  des  lamentations  de  mauvais  augure.  Ces  arbustes,  qui  le  matin 
invitaient  gracieusement  la  robe  blanche  &  s'arreter,  a  cueillir  des  baics  ou 
des  fleurs,  ils  ont  1'air  de  receler  maintenant  dans  leurs  fourres  jene  sais  quoi 
de  sinistre — des  voleurs  ?  ou  des  sorcieres  ?  Mais  le  changement  le  plus  fort 
est  celui  des  rochers  qui  nous  re?urent  et  nous  firent  asseoir.  Est-ce  le  soir? 
Est-ce  1'orage  imminent  qui  les  a  changed?  Je  1'ignore;  mais  les  voila 
devenus  de  sombres  sphinx,  des  elephants  couches  a  terre,  des  mammouths 
et  autres  monstres  des  mondes  anciens  qui  ne  sont  plus.  Ils  sont  assis,  il  est 
vrai;  mais  s'ils  allaient  se  lever?  Quoi  qu'il  en  soit,  1'heure  avance, 
marchons  .  .  .  L'on  se  presse  a  mon  bras." 

This  singular  personality  which  Michelet  here  gives  the  rocks  and  stones, 
others  have  been  known  to  give  to  members  of  the  vegetable  kingdom.  All 
growing  things  are  alive  to  them,  and  full  of  purpose  and  intelligence ;  a 
flower  is  not  to  be  plucked  with  inadvertence;  a  river  rolls  because  it  is  called 
by  the  sea,  as  youth  is  called  by  love ;  and  even  the  trees  assume  the  same 
intelligence  that  elder  mythology  gave  them  in  peopling  the  green  or  hollow 
stems  with  dryads.  A  botanist  once  declared  to  us  that  he  had  seen  a  tree 
manifest  all  the  intelligence  of  a  human  being.  This  tree  grew  in  the  chink 
of  a  rock  on  the  brink  of  a  slight  precipice,  with  a  mere  handful  of  soil  to 
nourish  it,  and  it  was  nourished  so  poorly  that  it  spindled  and  had  few  leaves, 
and  seemed  altogether  worthless.  One  day  the  person  claiming  the  "animula, 
vagula,  blandula"  for  the  little  sapling  saw  a  thread  that  had  been  put  forth 
from  among  the  roots — a  mere  slender  white  thread — creeping  over  the  brink 
of  the  precipice  and  dangling  there,  blown  about  by  the  wind,  and  growing 
longer  every  day.  At  the  foot  of  the  precipice  was  a  spring  of  water  and  some 
deep,  rich  soil ;  on  the  hither  side  the  soil  was  boggy,  on  the  farther  it  was 
rich  and  suitable.  The  little  thread  did  not  merely  drop  into  the  nearest 
place  and  take  root  in  the  boggy  hither  side ;  it  wavered  and  wavered  and 
pushed  out  till  it  landed  at  last  on  the  other  side  of  the  spring,  where  the 
ground  was  firm  and  good ;  and  before  long  the  fine  thread  was  a  coarse  one, 
the  coarse  one  was  a  yarn,  the  yarn  was  a  cord,  a  rope,  a  great  stem,  and  in 
time  it  looked  as  if  it  were  the  tree  itself  and  not  a  mere  rootlet  that  it  thrust 
down  where  it  felt  the  water.  Very  soon  after  it  struck  root,  the  sapling,  re- 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

ceiving  the  rich  food  and 
drink  of  the  spring,  sent 
out  a  fresh  head  of 
leaves,  presently  fresh 
branches,  and  began  to 
flourish  with  a  vigor  that 
had  never  been  dreamed 
of  for  it — with  such  a 
vigor  that  the  winds 
caught  in  the  full-leaved 
head  of  the  top-heavy 
little  thing,  and  it  was 
in  danger  of  being  up- 
rooted. What  now  did 
intelligence  do  ?  It  put 
forth  a  rootlet  on  the 
other  side,  curled  it 
round  and  round  the 
main  stem  in  the  crevice, 
till  finally,  as  the  root 
grew  large  and  thick,  it 
looked  as  though  it  had 
been  poured  fluid  into 
the  mould  of  that  crevice 
to  anchor  that  tree, 
which  it  did  securely, 
and  probably  for  genera- 
tions. 

If  we  may  not  accord 
intelligence,  rather  than 
the  mere  accident  of  situ- 
ation, to  the  work  of  this 
sapling,  yet  do  we  all  of 
us  on  occasion  personify 
some  noble  oak  or 

pine,  as  Olive's  lover  did  the  oak  that  stood  knee  deep  in  fern  and  brake ; 
we  all  of  us  personify  a  mountain  eternally  couchant,  and  we  all  of 
us  find  the  love  of  nature  a  free-masonry  that  even  when  circumstances, 
station,  and  education  are  all  at  odds,  make  us  the  children  of  one 
mother. 


MOUNTAINS  LIFTIN 


THEIR  HEADS  INTO  HEAVEN. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


163 


WHITE  AND  INNOCENT  FIELDS. 


Sunlight. 

If.  we  have  decided  that  that  home  is  happier  which  is  in  a  measure  in  the 
country,  we  must  further  resolve  that  the  home  shall  be  full  of  sunshine,  both 
of  the  soul  and  of  the  heavens.  There  is  more  than  idle  fancy  in  the  old  sun 
worship  of  the  Persian  and  of  the  Mexican,  the  inhabitants  of  two  regions 
with  the  diameter  of  the  globe  between  them,  but  where  kindred  climate  gave 
birth  to  kindred  instincts.  There,  with  the  sun  powerful  and  beneficent  above 
them,  at  the  touch  of  whose  rays  earth  seemed  to  blush  with  bloom,  like  at- 
tendants upon  which  the  winds  came  laden  with  perfume  and  delicious 
warmth,  with  whose  reign  life  resolved  itself  into  a  mere  pleasure  of  exist- 
ence, under  such  circumstances,  and  with  no  revelation  of  another  form  of  re- 
ligion, it  was  not  wonderful  that  to  these  people  the  sun  seemed  to  be  the 
splendid  shroud  of  a  divine  power  dwelling  within  it. 

They  saw  the  sun  the  center  of  the  universe,  and  all  things  seeming  to 
revolve  around  him.  They  saw  the  seed  lying,  for  eons  it  might  be,  in  the 
bosom  of  the  mother  earth,  but  never  springing  into  life  till  touched  by  the 
fructifying  power  of  the  sun.  They  saw  those  portions  of  the  earth  remotest 
from  his  influence  wrapped  in  ice  and  frigor,  desolation  and  darkness,  while 
between  such  parallels  as  lay  perpetually  beneath  him  a  prodigious  vegetation 
and  life  and  beauty  reveled ;  and  they  felt  that  behind  this  creative  power  the 
Creator  Himself  must  be  ensphered — the  Creator,  the  Friend,  the  Benefactor, 
the  Father  of  all,  Who  when  He  came  brought  hope  and  joy  with  Him,  and 
when  He  went  left  darkness  and  doubt  and  fear  to  creep  in  behind  Him. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  165 

After  all,  it  was  at  once  the  simplest  and  the  most  beautiful  of  the  an- 
cient and  heathen  religions.  It  had  none  of  the  complexity  of  the  Grecian 
paganism  that,  a  natural  offshoot  under  JEgean  winds  and  skies  and  the  artis- 
tic fancy  indigenous  there,  became  an  utterly  artificial  manufacture  when 
transplanted  into  the  Roman  atmosphere.  It  had  in  its  early  form  none  of 
the  mysticism  of  the  Hindostanee,  none  of  the  barbarity  of  the  Polynesian 
and  its  related  religions.  It  was  the  idea  that  must  have  suggested  itself  at 
once  to  the  reason  and  the  imagination  of  primitive  man  in  a  happy  and  com- 
fortable condition.  It  cumbered  itself  with  no  personalities,  and  it  perplexed 
itself  with  no  dogmas.  Before  the  revelation  of  the  truth,  of  a  religion  of 
self-sacrifice  and  endeavor,  nothing  could  have  been  purer  or  more  joyous  than 
this  worship  of  the  sun. 

We  have  learned  better  now  than  to  worship  the  instrument  as  the  orig- 
inator. But  for  all  that,  the  most  of  us  remember  our  home  in  the  East,  that 
great  breeding-place  of  the  race;  some  traditions  of  it  cling  to  us  yet,  and 
among  them  we  have  a  veneration  for  the  sunshine,  the  ancient  and  unal- 
terable sunshine.  Whatever  melancholy  there  may  be  in  our  composition  as- 
serts itself  at  the  twilight  hour  when  the  sun  is  withdrawing  from  us.  All 
our  gladness  and  gayety  break  forth  in  the  morning  hour  when  his  smile 
kindles  the  heavens.  The  dark  days  when  cloud  hides  him  throw  their  veil 
over  our  own  spirits  also,  and  it  seems  in  that  thick  weather  as  though  noth- 
ing would  go  amiss  if  only  the  sun  were  out.  Nor  is  it  anywise  strange  that 
it  should  be  so ;  for  apart  from  the  physical  pleasure  it  affords,  this  sweet, 
soft,  penetrating  sunshine  is  the  emblem  of  all  tenderness  and  strength,  of 
all  benevolence  and  impartiality ;  like  the  rain,  it  falls  on  the  just  and  on  the 
unjust,  and  wherever  it  falls  a  blessing  springs  up  to  meet  it.  For  when  the 
sun  shines,  we  can  all  of  us  cry  out  with  the  joy  of  the  old  Earth  in  the 
"Prometheus:" 

"It  interpenetrates  my  granite  mass; 

Through  tangled  roots  and  trodden  clay  doth  pass 
Into  the  utmost  leaves  and delicatest  flowers; 

Upon  the  winds,  among  the  clouds,  'tis  spread; 

It  wakes  a  life  in  the  forgotten  dead — 
They  breathe  a  spirit  up  from  their  obscurest  bowers!" 


(i  66) 


THE  DARK  SHADOW  OF  THE  BRANCH-HUNG  STREAM. 


STEPPING    STONES  -TO    HAPPINESS.  167 


CHAPTER    SEVENTH. 


Vine  and  Fig  Tree. 


Throw  hither  all  your  quaint  enameled  eyes 
That  on  the  green  turf  suck  the  honied  showers, 
And  purple  all  the  ground  with  vernal  flowers. 
Bring  the  rathe  primrose  that  forsaken  dies. 
The  tufted  crow-toe  and  pale  jessamine, 
The  white  pink,  and  the  pansy  freakt  with  jet, 

The  glowing  violet, 

The  musk-rose  and  the  well  attired  woodbine, 
With  cowslips  wan  that  hang  the  pensive  head, 
And  every  flower  that  sad  embroidery  wears. 

— Milton. 

God  Almighty  first  planted  a  garden. 

— Bacon. 

There  is  no  ancient  gentleman  but  gardeners. 

— Shakespeare. 

And  add  to  these  retired  Leisure 

That  in  trim  gardens  takes  his  pleasure. 

¥  — Milton. 

When  tillage  begins  other  arts  follow. 

— Daniel  Webster. 

No  daintier  flowre  or  herbe  that  growes  on  grownd, 

No  arborett  with  painted  blossoms  drest, 

And  smelling  sweete,  but  there  it  might  be  fouwnd. 

To  bud  out  faire  and  throwe  her  sweete    smels  al  arownd. 

•Spenser. 

But  if  the  house  is  in  what  is  called  the  country  or  on  the  country's  edge, 
we  shall  find  another  stepping  stone  to  happiness  in  the  possession  and  cul- 
tivation of  a  garden,  and  if  we  live  in  town,  still  we  love  a  garden.  Every 
man  loves  his  own  garden.  It  is  the  delight  and  the  desire  of  the  farmer's 
wife  and  the  dream  of  the  old  sailor  coming  off  the  sea.  The  turning  up  of 
the  earth  is  in  obedience  to  one  of  the  natural  instincts,  perhaps  almost  the 
only  inheritance  we  carried  with  us  out  of  the  Garden  of  Eden.  Gardening 


STEPPING    STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 


indeed,  or  rather  the  pretty  potter- 
ing round  a  garden,  directing  some- 
body else  with  the  heavy  work,  and 
attending  one's  self  to  the  pictur- 
esque, is  an  occupation  than  which 
there  is  none  pleasanter,  as  all  those 
know  who  are  blessed  with  a  bit  of 
ground.  The  first  pulling  over  of  last  year's  flower  bed  is  like  coming  back 
from  long  absence  and  enjoying  the  society  of  a  mother;  and  as  strength  and 
vigor  come  to  us  while  we  meddle  with  the  soft  brown  soil  of  the  healing 
and  purifying  earth,  we  easily  understand  that  Antaeus  as  well  as  Adam  was 
a  gardener. 


The  Garden. 

Nor  is  there  anything  more  soothing  than  this  same  occupation  for  a 
mind  vexed  and  worried  by  many  cares.  The  breaking  up  of  the  ball  of  loam, 
the  raking  together  of  scattered  waste,  the  sowing  of  seeds,  the  cutting  of 
weeds,  the  removal  of  worms,  the  trimming  of  branches — all  that  distract  the 
thoughts  from  trouble,  together  with  the  slight  fatigue  of  bodily  labor — calm 
the  nerves  and  reduce  things  to  harmony. 

And  while  the  occupation  is  both  pleasing  and  soothing,  it  is  the  one  work 
of  all  which  has  most  promise  and  most  accomplishment  in  it ;  we  know  that 
little  is  done  there  in  vain,  the  reward  is  constantly  before  us,  and  the  fulfill- 
ment of  the  first  part  comes  while  we  are  working  on  the  last.  We  see  the 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  169 

thing  grow  under  our  hands— the  seed  sprouts,  the  bud  sets,  the  flower  bloom s, 
the  fruit  ripens,  and  all  so  that  we  can  count  ourselves,  if  not  like  the  Orien- 
tal conjurers  under  whose  hands  the  seed  springs  from  shoot  to  fruit  in  twenty 
minutes'  time,  yet,  at  any  rate,  as  if  we  had  had  a  small  hand  in  helping  on 
the  seasons  and  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  each  after  its  kind. 


An  Old-Fashioned  Garden. 

And  what  in  the  world  is  there  lovelier  than  an  old-fashioned  garden — one 
not  so  carefully  kept  as  to  be  a  nuisance  rather  than  an  enjoyment  ?  Over  the 
old  walls  clamber  the  grape-vines  and  the  scrambling  blackberries,  beneath 
them  are  the  currant  bushes,  and  here  and  there  is  a  rare  plum  or  pear  tree,  or 
honeysuckles,  trained  on  tall  trellises, to  keep  a  sentinel's  watch  on  the  rest. 
Here  stand  the  queenly  hollyhocks  in  all  their  splendid  hues,  here  the  sweet 
stocks;  here  beds  of  carnation  spice  the  air  all  day  long;  and  pansies,  violets, 
roses,  southern-wood,  evening  primroses,  and  lilies — all  in  their  turn,  and 
sometimes  altogether — make  the  mere  breath  a  luxury;  while  in  some  neg- 
lected corner  a  forgotten  sunflower  absorbs  all  the  warmth  and  wealth  of  its 
region,  and  suddenly  spires  up  and  spreads  its  broad  disk  like  a  fiery  illumin- 
ation. We  do  not  care  for  scientific  work  in  our  old-fashioned  garden,  nor  do 
we  perplex  ourselves  with  massing  and  separating  the  colors  much :  the  sight 
of  them  all,  as  nature  happened  to  throw  them  together,  is.  pleasure  enough ; 
while  in  the  distance  the  modest  kitchen-garden  throws  in  a  sturdy  back- 
ground of  greenery,  with  its  fluttering  bean  and  pea  blossoms,  with  the  great 
green  roses  of  its  cabbages,  with  the  reddening  boet-tops,  the  feathery  car- 
rots, and  the  waving  plumes  of  corn. 

When  the  chief  care  and  labor  are  over — not  great  at  any  time,  certainly 
— to  sit  on  summer  days  with  book  or  work  in  a  garden  chair  on  the  reserved 
grass-plot  of  such  a  place,  is  a  satisfaction  that  few  who  are  not  bound  by 
the  city  have  need  to  deny  themselves.  And  when  we  add  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  senses  the  fuller  satisfaction  of  looking  en  a  scene  that  would  not  have 
been  but  for  our  own  hands,  of  feeling  that  we  have  added  by  our  personal 
exertion  to  the  beauty  and  to  the  wealth  of  the  world,  that  summer  is  more 
summer  for  our  flowers,  and  mankind  is  richer  for  our  potatoes  and  tomatoes* 
we  wonder  everybody  does  not  hasten  to  the  study  of  the  almanac  and  the 
task  of  laying  out  a  garden ! 

The  Almanac. 

For  in  the  habit  of  studying  the  almanac  lies  a  part  of  the  pleasure  of 
having  a  garden.  When  we  open  the  Old  Farmer's  or  the  first  pages  of  our 


1?0  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

handy  volume  diary,  we  hunt  up  our  birthdays,  consider  on  what  days  the 
festivals  of  the  next  year  may  be  found,  look  to  see  if  any  eclipses  will  hap- 
pen in  our  part  of  the  world,  and  take  more  or  less  unconscious  pleasure  in 
the  cabalistic  pages,  some  of  which  still,  in  spite  of  all  that  has  been  done 
for  us,  we  understand  no  better  than  the  peasant,  who,  bewildered  with  his 
first  one,  cried,  "Well,  well,  it  maffles  and  talks;  but  all  I  could  make  out  is 
that  Collop-Monday  falls  on  a  Tuesday  next  year. " 

The  almanac  as  we  have  it  was  not  enjoyed  by  our  grandmothers.  If  they 
wanted  such  a  thing  at  all,  they  had  to  be  content — and  doubtless  were — with 
one  full  of  fortune-telling  and  astrology,  to  which  the  days  and  tides  and 
moons  were  quite  subsidiary — lucky  if  they  could  read  it  any  way.  For  in  its 
present  state  the  almanac  is  almost  a  modern  invention,  since,  although  the 
Greeks  of  Alexandria  had  one  as  early  as  the  first  century,  it  would  hardly  be 
taken  for  a  poor  relation  of  ours.  In  Rome,  in  the  primitive  times,  an  officer 
proclaimed  the  day  and  the  weather  in  the  streets,  and  a  placard  of  the  fact 
was  put  up  in  public  places.  But  the  first  almanac  worth  attention  at  all 
must  have  been  that  of  Solomon  Jarchus,  issued  in  the  middle  of  the  twelfth 
century.  Even  the  origin  of  the  thing's  name  is  a  subject  of  as  much  mys- 
tery as  any  other  of  its  facts,  these  holding  that  it  belongs  to  the  Arab  alma- 
nak — a  record — and  those,  that  it  is  from  the  Saxon  al-mon-aght — the  heed  of 
the  moon — all  the  changes  of  our  satellite  having  long  been  carved  on  a  stick 
thus  named;  indeed,  a  stick  or  "clog"  having  been  brought  in  from  Denmark 
so  artistically  carved  with  symbols  of  time  as  to  be  a  subject  of  a  good  deal  of 
scholastic  interest. 

In  a  library  at  Oxford  is  an  almanac  computed  by  Peter  of  Darcia  in 
1300,  and  in  this  that  mythical,  allegorical,  and,  to  most,  inexplicable  figure 
called  the  "man  of  the  signs"  makes  his  debut.  Oxford,  indeed,  after  this, 
gave  its  authority  to  all  the  English  calendars  'of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  one 
made  there  in  the  last  years  of  the  fourteenth  century  had  the  calendar  of  the 
rainy  days  to  be  expected,  and  the  precise  statement  of  what  season  it  is  good 
to  build  or  marry  in,  and  all  the  science  of  the  day,  the  "Houses  of  the  Planets, 
events  from  the  birth  of  Cain,  short  notes  on  medicine,  movable  feasts,  and 
blood-letting,"  which,  after  all,  was  not  so  unlike  some  still  among  us.  However, 
the  second,  if  not  really  the  first,  one  printed  on  the  European  continent  came 
from  Buda,  in  Hungary,  and  was  calculated  for  three  years,  containing  little 
but  the  eclipses  and  the  places  of  the  planets.  But  we  may  well  take  heart 
of  grace  in  this  age  of  free  distribution  when  we  remember  that  this  sold  for 
ten  crowns  in  gold. 

The  Sheapard's  Kalcndar,  translated  from  the  French,  is  thought  to  be 
the  first  one  printed  in  England,  which  did  not  have  printed  ones  till  fifty 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


171 


3' ears  after 
France.  In  1558 
comes  one  that 
carrieson  its  title- 
page  the  words, 
''Wherein  is  ex-, 
pressed  the 
Change  and  Full 
of  the  Mocne, 
with  their  quar- 
ters. The  varie- 
tie  of  the  Ayres 
and  also  of  the 
Windes  through- 
out the  whole 
yere,  with  Vnfor- 
tunate  Times  to 
Bieand  Sell." 

Nevertheless, 
in  Leonard 
Digges*  time,  a 
half-dozen  years 
earlier  than  this 
last  brochure, 
there  had  already 
arisen  numerous 
doubters  and 
sneerers  at  the 
astrological  por- 
tion of  the  al- 
manacs, whom 
this  worthy 
stoutly  com- 
bated. Having 
declared  that  the 
rising  of  Orion, 
Arcturus,  and 

Corona  provoked  tempestuous  weather,  and  the  Hyades  rain,  "Who  is  ignor- 
ant," he  exclaims,  "though  poorly  skilled  in  astronomy,  that  Jupiter  with 
Mercury,  or  with  the  sun,  enforces  rage  of  winds  ?  What  is  he  that  perceives 


EVERY    ONE    LOVES    A    GARDEN. 


,72  STEPPING    STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 

not  the  fearful  thunders,  lightnings,  and  rains  at  the  meeting  of   Mars  and 
Venus,  or  Jupiter  and  Mars?     Desist,  for  shame,  to  oppugn  these  judgments 

so  strongly  authorized!" 

In  France,  the  astrological  character  of  the  work  had  allowed  the  taking 
of  great  liberties,  and  it  was  found  necessary  to  forbid  the  prophesying 
against  affairs  of  state  or  of  people — the  fulfilled  prophecy  of  the  downfall  of 
the  Du  Barri  having  given  great  encouragement  to  true  believers.  But  in 
England  full  latitude  was  never  interfered  with  by  the  state,  except  that  a 
monopoly  of  the  publication  was  given  the  Company  of  Stationers  and  the  two 
universities,  the  latter,  however,  soon  selling  out  to  the  former.  This  done, 
there  came  to  be  two  strong  parties  in  the  matter  of  almanac-making,  the 
philomaths  and  the  astrologers,  and  hot  was  the  warfare  between  them.  But 
in  the  time  of  the  civil  wars  superstition  was  still  rampant,  and  those  with 
the  most  gloriously  impossible  predictions  were  the  most  eagerly  bought. 

*  Poor  Robin's  Almanac  did,  perhaps,  as  much  as  anything  else  in  the  exter- 
mination of  this  kind,  it  was  published  in  1664,  and  although  often  low  and 
coarse,  had  much  good-humored  raillery  at  the  ignorant  sort.  "We  may  ex- 
pect," it  ran,  "some  showers  of  rain  this  month,  or  the  next,  or  the  next  after 
that,  or  we  shall  have  a  very  dry  spring."  Robert  Herrick  had  a  hand  in 
this,  as  Decker  had  in  a  slightly  earlier  one  of  a  similar  nature.  John  Eve- 
lyn, of  "Diary"  fame,  had  already  published  one  of  an  entirely  serious  and 
suitable  nature  for  the  sole  use  of  gardeners.  At  last,  in  1708,  Dean  Swift 
tried  his  hand  at  this  literature,  and  issued  one  in  which  he  satirically  de- 
clared that  a  certain  Partridge,  an  importer  in  the  line  of  astrological  alma- 
nacs, should  die  on  a  fixed  day,  at  eleven  at  night  of  a  fever.  Partridge,  after 
that  fixed  day,  certified  to  the  fact  that  he  was  still  alive.  In  Swift's  amusing; 
epitaph  on  the  man  are  the  lines: 

"And  you  that  did  your  fortunes  seek, 
Step  to  his  grave  but  once  a  week, 
This  earth,  which  bears  his  body's  print, 
You'll  find  has  so  much  virtue  in't, 
That  I  durst  pawn  my  ears  'twill  tell 
Whate'er  concerns  you  full  as  well, 
In  physic,  stolen  goods,  or  love, 
As  he  himself  could  when  above." 

Half  a  century  after  all  this,  Andrews  was  doing  work  on  the  regular  al- 
manac so  as  to  increase  its  circulation  to  five  hundred  thousand,  although  him- 
self never  receiving  more  than  twenty-five  pounds  a  year.  Yet  the  first  really 
decent  one  of  all  appears  to  have  been  our  own  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  by 
Benjamin  Franklin;  and  it  was  not  until  the  first  quarter  of  the  present  cen- 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


tury  that  the  astrological  parts  disappeared  from 
the  usual  British  almanac,  while  we  all  still  tol- 
erate the  promise  of  snow  or  rain  "at  about  this 
time."  We  may,  then,  thank  the  stars,  that  are 

no  longer  consulted  in 
the  making  of  almanacs, 
that  we  may  open  our 
diaries,  or  our  little 
Lady's  Almanac,  and  no 
longer  be  tormented  with 
predictions  of  the  de- 
struction of  the  world, 
being  glad  that  almanac- 
makers,  at  any  rate,  have 
relegated  that  work  to 
the  astronomical  savants, 
who  may  tell  us  that  the 
earth  is  drying  up  to- 
day, and  dropping  into 
the  sun  to-morrow,  with- 
out troubling  us  a  whit 
if  we  do  not  have  to  read 
the  fact  every  day  of  our 
lives  in  finding  the  day 
^gi^,,|  of  the  month. 
^_  But  for  all  this  we 

have  known  the  almanac 
11      do  strange  things  in  its 
:  ;;;  ^       way.      Indeed,  we  knew 
a  family  where  it   was 
not  only  a  cloud-compelling  Zeus, 
ordaining  the  weather,  making  the 
days  of  the  month  walk  up  to  the 
mark,  and  bringing  about  eclipses 
and  convulsions  of  nature  at  its 
will,  but  where  it  really  wrought 
nothing  less  than  magic.      It  al- 
ways hung  by  the  side  of  the  huge  chimney-piece,  along  with  other  mystical 
paraphernalia  of  that  hearth ;  and  when  an  offence  had  been  committed  whose 
perpetrator  was  undiscoverable  by  common  earthly  means,  the  family  of  chil- 


THE    MODEST    KITCHEN    GARDEN. 


i74  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

dren  were  summoned,  and  were  ranged  in  a  solemn  row  before  the  head  of 
the  house,  who  took  down  the  almanac,  read  aloud  those  terrible  things  about 
Aries  and  Libra  and  Scorpio  and  Gemini,  and  made  the  awful  signs  of  the 
Zodiac  with  the  tongs  in  the  ashes,  and  turned  the  leaves  and  consulted  the 
quarters  of  the  moon  and  flow  of  the  tides,  all  interspersed  with  swift-scru- 
tinizing glances  at  the  waiting  row,  till  suddenly  the  pale  and  trembling 
culprit  of  the  ordeal  was  singled  out  by  name ;  and  great  was  the  birch  rod, 
and  the  almanac  was  its  prophet  there. 

But  it  hardly  needs  the  almanac  to  tell  us  that  when  snow  is  gone,  the 
sun  is  shining  and  the  birds  are  building;  then  it  is  time  to  begin  to  turn  up 
the  earth,  and  let  the  air  of  heaven  in  to  nitrogenize  the  under  side  of  the 
clods. 


The  Apple  Tree. 

It  is  often  a  pathetic  sight  as  one  drives  along  the  rural  roads  to  see  the 
effort  that  the  wife  of  the  laborer,  or  the  small  farmer,  has  made  to  get  her 
little  garden  with  its  patch  of  color.  But  if  it  be  in  the  spring-time  that  one 
drives,  the  pathos  is  sometimes  lost  in  the  beauty  of  the  apple  orchard  that  rises 
behind  the  garden  and  throws  it  into  foreground.  For  who,  living  in  the 
country  or  the  large  country  town,  in  the  parallels  of  its  habitat,  pretends  to 
own  a  home  without  an  apple  tree  ? 

And  who  owns  an  apple  tree  and  does  not  wish  for  two  ?  And  who  would 
own  a  farm  without  an  orchard  ?  And  who  that  has  one  does  not  feel  a 
kind  of  family  affection  for  the  old  gnarled  and  moss-grown  stem  which  has 
so  rooted  itself  in  the  soil,  and  has  so  long  been  a  part  of  the  family  life,  as 
to  seem  little  less  than  an  ancestor? 

There  are  harvests  the  world  over,  each  having  a  peculiar  charm  and 
'beauty  of  its  own.  In  one  place  it  is  the  harvest  of  the  vineyard  on  the  cas- 
tled slopes  of  the  Rhine,  on  the  hills  of  France,  or  the  volcanic  sides  of  Vesu- 
vius, in  the  fields  of  Greece — harvests  around  whose  bald  facts  are  woven 
images  of  beauty  in  form  and  hue  that  painters  and  sculptors  and  singers  have 
been  swift  to  seize.  Then  there  is  the  harvest  of  the  grain  field,  with  its 
reapers,  its  sheaves,  its  wains,  its  sweet  old  stories,  such  as  that  of  Ruth  in 
the  corn ;  its  pictures,  such  as  that  famous  one  of  the ' '  Blessing  of  the  Wheat' ' ; 
its  vast  Western  existence  on  this  continent  of  boundless  horizons,  and  won- 
der-working machines  tossing  sheaves  to  right  and  left  like  giants  at  play. 
If  less  universal  than  these,  yet  hardly  less  beautiful,  is  the  hop  harvest,  with 
its  lovely  blooming  bunches  in  a  sort  of  simulation  of  the  grape,  and  the 
scenes  of  its  merry  pickers  down  their  long  green  lanes.  But  quite  as  full  of 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  175 

attraction  as  any  other  is  the  apple  harvest  of  New  England  and  those  regions 
where  the  apple-tree  is  as  much  an  institution  as  the  house  itself. 

From  the  first  flake  of  the  pink  snow  that  drifts  across  their  boughs  in 
May  with  clouds  of  fragrance  and  songs  of  nestlings  and  lights  of  glancing 
wings,  to  the  heavy  drooping  of  their  branches  dropping  thick  shade  in  the 
deeps  of  summer,  to  the  time  when  they  are  starred  with  their  ruddy  wealth, 
the  apple-tree  is  a  pleasure  to  the  eye  and  to  the  senses — perfect  in  its  spring- 
time beauty,  and  with  an  air  of  homely  heartiness  and  health  the  rest  of  the 
year;  a  matronly,  motherly  thing,  happy,  it  would  almost  seem,  in  giving 
happiness,  as  if  it  knew  how  grateful  was  its  summer  shade,  its  autumn 
juices;  as  if  it  knew  the  good  times  it  furnished  to  the  gay  guests  of  the  "par- 
ing bee"  ;  to  lovers  sitting  by  the  fire  and  watching  their  greenings  sputter 
as  they  roast  before  the  coals  and  tell  the  tale  of  which  loves  the  best;  to  the 
roysterers  of  All-halloween  ducking  their  heads  in  water  tubs  for  the  red  re- 
treating sphere ;  to  friends  and  neighbors  on  a  winter  night  who,  having 
trudged  across  the  snowy  fields,  are  regaled  with  mellow  fruit  and  mellower 
cider;  to  all  the  light-limbed  gatherers  on  autumn  days  who  climb  among  the 
boughs  or  roll  the  bright  heaps  together  in  the  orchard  corners. 

There  are  few  scenes  pleasanter  to  the  eye  of  those  that  from  childhood 
have  known  the  apple-tree  in  garden  and  field  and  about  the  back  door  than 
those  of  the  apple  gathering.  The  branches,  that  all  the  summer  have  hung 
a  little  more  heavily  day  by  day,  have  long  been  hiding  under  their  dropping 
weight  the  far-stretching  orchard  aisles  whose  arched  roofs  and  turfed  floors 
have  seemed  fit  for  fairy  dancing-halls;  now  men  and  boys  have  climbed 
among  them  with  baskets  and  ladders,  or  are  emptying  their  loads  by  the  piles 
of  barrels,  this  load  yellow  as  the  apples  of  the  Hesperides,  that  red  as  rubies 
are,  and  all  as  fragrant  as  the  first  apple  that  ever  tempted  Eve.  The  girls 
and  the  women  of  the  family  are  usually  as  busy  as  the  men  are,  too;  and 
even  the  horses  of  the  waiting  teams  arch  their  necks  and  turn  their  wistful 
eyes,  appreciative  of  the  sweet  morsels  that  they  love  so  well.  In  all  the 
time  of  the  harvest  no  other  work  is  to  be  done,  no  men  can  be  hired  to  lay 
stone  or  haul  gravel  or  cart  wood;  the  "appling, "  before  the  frost  can  work 
its  mischief,  or  the  high  winds  toss  and  hurt  the  fruit,  has  tasked  the  ener- 
gies of  a  whole  neighborhood. 

How  picturesque,  then,  are  the  cider  mills  with  their  enormous  heaps  of 
fruit  about  them!  how  far  and  how  deliciously  on  every  hand  you  can  scent 
the  air  they  load  with  their  aroma  as  you  ride  along,  as  if  the  virtue  of  golden 
pippin,  and  of  the  gillyflowers,  the  richness  of  whose  deep  red  skin  stains  the 
snowiness  of  the  black-seeded  white  flesh  with  a  crimson  tinge  of  snow-apple, 
and  of  nonesuch,  had  all  melted  into  the  atmosphere,  and  become  a  part  of 


1?6  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

it!  And  although  the  sky  be  full  of  the  promise  of  winter,  and  although  the 
heap  of  fruit  be  chill  to  the  touch,  one  feels,  in  receiving  the  rich  odor,  in 
looking  at  the  rich  colors  of  the  glittering  heaps  on  the  ground,  something  of 
the  warmth  and  cheer  of  which  they  will  presently  be  a  part ;  of  red-embered 
fires,  and  beaming  faces  round  them  that  they  will  help  illuminate — fires  no 
more  red  and  shining  than  the  apples  that  toast  before  them;  of  "turn-overs," 
and  of  "pan-dowdies,"  and  of  "apple-jack"  ;  and  one  feels  that  the  apple  har- 
vest is  valued  none  too  much,  and  that,  from  the  blossoms  of  May  to  the  "dried- 
apple  smice"  of  March,  the  apple  tree  is  the  special  blessing  of  its  owners  and 
growers,  all  that  the  date  is  to  the  Arab,  a  rough-coated,  warm-hearted  friend, 
a  vegetable  guardian  angel  of  hearth  and  home  and  happiness. 


Woman  in  Agriculture. 

But  whether  she  has  an  orchard  or  not,  every  woman  who  has  ten  feet* 
of  earth  about  her  door  thinks  herself  an  object  of  blame  if  she  has  not  at 
least  a  rose-bush,  a  cluster  of  coleus,  and  a  honey-suckle  in  it ;  and  she  may 
be  seen  in  spring  and  fall  and  in  the  heats  of  summer  watering  and  pruning 
and  digging  as  she  would  think  herself  abominably  used  if  it  were  expected 
of  her  now-a-days  in  relation  to  any  matter  pertaining  to  the  economies,  such 
as  hoeing  the  corn  or  digging  the  potatoes,  or  doing  anything  of  the  sort,  let 
it  be  lighter  or  heavier  work,  whose  end  is  not  purely  aesthetic.  She  has  no 
idea  of  returning  to  the  tasks  of  her  savage  ancestress ;  she  has  sublimated 
and  idealized  those  tasks.  But  unconsciously  though  she  makes  the  offering, 
yet  nevertheless  every  blossom  that  blows  under  her  hands  is  a  tribute  to  that 
ancestress,  an  offering  on  her  altar,  a  memorial  service  to  her  who  first  dis- 
covered and  turned  to  her  advantage  the  warmth  and  fertility  and  creative 
power  of  the  mother  earth. 


Among  the  Lake  Dwellings. 

"The  ruins  of  so-called  lake  dwellings,"  says  a  graphic  address  of  Mr. 
Lyman  before  an  agricultural  society,  "covered  for  long  ages  with  water,  have 
revealed  the  beginnings  of  such  culture  in  Europe.  Among  the  charred  piles 
which  once  supported  wooden  cabins  built  in  a  lake  have  been  found  bones  of 
oxen,  dogs,  and  goats,  and  beside  them  heaps  of  wheat  and  barley.  No  writ- 
ing, monument,  or  tradition  remains  to  tell  us  who  were  these  primitive  til- 
lers of  the  soil  who  thus  sought  safety  from  enemies  amid  the  waters.  By 
their  implements,  fished  up  in  quantities  from  the  bottom,  we  know  that  some 
of  them  still  maintained  the  good  old  fashion  of  stone  tools,  while  others,  more 


Poor  Richard, 


AN 


Almanack 

For  tlte  Year  of  Chrift 

1733> 

Being  the  FirH  after  LEAP  YEAR: 


k£s  Jince  tht.  Creation, 
"By  the  Account  of  the  £aftem.<?Tee£y 
By  the  Latin.  Chwrdti    when  O  «nt  y» 
By  the  Computation,  of  W"W. 
By  Ihe  Raman  Chronology 
By  the  Jt&ip  Rabljiej 

Wherein,  is  cctttAtneJ, 
The  Lunatiow*,.  Eclfpfes,  Judgment  of 

tta  Weather,  Spring  Tid«»,   Plan  eh  Matiou*  8« 
nitiiiial  AipccfS)  5un.and  MOON'S  Hiring  and  S^t- 
trug.   Length,  of  J)ay5,  TimC   of  High-  Water,. 
Fain,  Court;,  and  otfctVAbk  D^vs 
Fitt«d  to  ilie  Latitude  of  Forty  Degrees 
and  «u  Merlditn  of  F»Ve  Hours  W«ft  from  J*n*m 
"bufrway  without  fenftblc  Errw  fenneaJLth* 
jaccnk  flacw,    evm  fiBm.Ne»fou»dla»J  to 

^ 


,78  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

ambitious,  were  able  to  cast  implements  of  bronze — another  lesson  from  mother 
earth,  who  yielded  her  copper  and  tin  for  the  melting-pot.  They  were  bar- 
barians, with  the  manners  of  barbarians ;  and  it  is  safe  to  infer  that  women 
did  all  the  field-work,  and  held  undisputed  possession  of  what  the  French 
call  'the  sacred  right  to  labor.'  The  man  goes  into  the  Swiss  forest  intent, 
with  flint-headed  arrow,  to  slay  a  red  deer;  the  woman  must  till  the  field,  and 
be  back  in  good  season  with  a  bundle  of  firewood  to  boil  the  venison,  which 
her  lord  may  eat  while  she  dresses  the  hide  with  a  stone  scraper.  To  her  the 
duty  of  gathering,  quartering,  and  drying  the  wild  apples  for  winter  use ; 
their  fragments  have  been  found — prototypes  of  apple-sauce.  She  must 
bring  the  grain  in  from  the  small  clearings,  and  store  it  safely  in  the  lake- 
dwelling,  under  the  eye  of  its  master,  who  sits  lazily  chipping  a  pebble, 
whereof  he  will  fashion,  by  some  weeks  of  labor,  a  spear-head.  That  woman 
wrought  better  than  she  knew.  While,  perchance,  her  thoughts  were  only  on 
her  finery — her  bronze  bracelets  and  hair-pins — she  was  founding  an  ever- 
glorious  reputation  as  the  Discoverer  of  Agriculture.  It  passes  my  compre- 
hension that  writers  on  woman's  rights  and  woman's  superiority  have  not 
earlier  hit  on  this  capital  fact — woman  was  the  discoverer  of  agriculture.  The 
classic  nations  recognized  it.  Ceres  of  the  Romans,  Demeter  of  the  Greeks, 
was  not  a  god,  but  a  goddess,  who  taught  the  uses  of  corn.  On  the  eve  of 
her  festival  the  women  drove  out  of  the  temple  men  and  dogs,  shut  the  doors, 
and  had  a  good  time  by  themselves.  Alas,  genius  lives  on  unconscious  of 
itself!  Woman  planted  and  garnered  all  through  the  last  of  the  stone  period 
and  the  beginning  of  that  of  bronze  unconscious  that  her  praises  would  be 
sung  ages  afterward  by  the  Norfolk  County  Agricultural  Society.  When  she 
quartered  and  dried  those  sour  wild  apples,  did  she  dream  of  pomological 
clubs?  Did  she  suppose  it  would  ever  be  possible  to  propagate  three  hundred 
varieties  of  pears  ?  There  is  encouragement  to  be  drawn  from  such  late 
recognition  of  genius." 

Perhaps  it  was  "genius"  in  this  early  woman,  perhaps  it  was  the  instinct- 
ive turning  to  the  creative  earth,  perhaps  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  cir- 
cumstance that  the  savage  lord  and  master  found  the  wild  exhilaration  of 
the  hunt  something  vastly  more  pleasant  than  bending  with  the  rude  imple- 
ments of  the  time  over  the  furrow,  and  fighting  the  wild  boar  infinitely  gayer 
work  than  fighting  weeds.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  power  that  impelled 
her  to  the  work,  it  is  interesting  to  remember  that  gardening  was  woman's 
work  ever  since  Eve  plucked  the  roses  of  Eden,  and  that  her  descendants,  over 
their  little  trellises  and  rockeries,  their  vases,  and  window  boxes,  are  only 
following  out  what  hundreds  of  generations  may  have  now  trained  into  a 
purely  feminine  instinct. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  I79 

A  Picturesque  Sight. 

Nor  could  there  be  a  pleasanter  illustration  of  feminine  instinct  than  the 
delight  of  making  something  grow  where  nothing  grew  before,  the  delight  of 
creation,  and  of  producing  and  increasing  beauty  to  gladden  the  eyes  of  the 
world.  It  is,  perhaps,  to  be  doubted,  if  flower-gardening  were  a  plebeian  occu- 
pation, whether  feminine  instinct  would  turn  to  it  quite  so  willingly,  al- 
though we  fancy  that  even  in  that  case  there  would  be  surreptitious  little 
boxes  of  mignonette  and  violets  hidden  away  in  corners  for  private,  if  vulgar, 
enjoyment.  But  since  even  duchesses  handle  now  and  then  a  garden  rake  and 
play  the  pastoral,  no  woman  of  lesser  degree,  or  of  any  republican  degree,, 
feels  that  her  dignity  suffers  any  derogation  from  the  use  of  her  little  hoe  and 
sprinkler.  She  knows  that  she  not  only  adds  beauty  to  the  world,  but  is  a 
picturesque  object  in  the  landscape  while  doing  it,  not  only  in  the  tender 
spring  and  summer,  but  at  a  time  when  the  out-door  world  is  cheerless,  and 
needs  such  an  enlivening  object  as  her  bright  colors  and  busy  movements, 
make  her.  Moreover,  if  she  herself  is  not  conscious  of  it,  others  are  con- 
scious that  the  work  is  a  refining  one,  that  rude  movements  are  impossible: 
where  such  delicate  objects  are  concerned,  and  that  ungracious  thoughts  can- 
not have  wide  range  in  the  mind  of  her  who  watches  the  slow,  sweet  progress; 
of  the  bud  becoming  a  flower,  and  takes  heed  to  feed  and  nurture  it  some- 
thing as  a  mother  cares  for  a  child,  while  she  sees  loveliness  growing  under 
her  hand  as  it  grows  under  the  hand  of  painter  or  carver.  Meanwhile  the. 
bountiful  old  earth  remembers  well  those  who  take  pleasure  in  occupying 
themselves  with  her;  and  for  all  the  toil  in  the  damps  of  spring,  the  heats  of 
summer,  or  the  chills  of  autumn,  she  gives  a  robustness  and  rosiness  that 
make  the  beauty  of  the  flowers  not  the  only  beauty  evoked  from  her  proc- 
esses. She  repays  the  effort  expended  on  her  by  a  fine  familiarity  with  her 
ways,  which  makes  the  fair  gardener  seem  to  be  more  a  thing  of  nature  than 
of  art  herself ;  and  every  once  in  a  while  she  causes  one  to  think  that,  but  for 
women,  those  flowers  which  are  merely  objects  of  beauty  and  not  utility 
might  perish  out  of  the  world.  In  his  charming  "Out-door  Papers"  Colonel 
Higginson  describes  a  piece  of  statuary,  a  fountain  in  a  garden,  whose  fine 
fall  wrapped  three  marble  maidens  in  a  veil  of  spray,  and  in  winter  sheathed 
them  about  with  glittering,  many-rainbowed  ice.  Such  a  sculpture  in  agaiv 
den  is  but  a  monument  to  those  women  who  were  possibly,  it  seems,  the  first 
gardeners  ages  ago,  and  who  are  the  tutelary  genii  of  all  flower  gardeners 
now. 

Perhaps  Mrs.  Royal's  garden  was  a  trifle  disappointing,  but  such  as  it 
was,  would  you  like  to  hear  about  it  ? 


(l8o)  WHO  OWNS  AN  APPLE  TREE  AND  DOES  NOT  WISH  FOR  TWO  ? 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  i8x 

Mrs.  Royal's  Garden. 

There  are  few  greater  luxuries  in  life  than  the  possession  of  a  garden,  a 
fine  old  kitchen-garden,  where  from  long  care  the  soil  has  a  tropical  rich- 
ness; where  there  are  corners  for  balm  and"yarbs"  and  spicy  shrubs;  where 
rows  of  currant  bushes  shut  you  off  from  rows  of  tomatoes ;  where  there  are 
long  arbors  of  case-knife  beans ;  where  melons  surprise  you  among  thickets 
of  corn,  and  pumpkins  and  squashes  climb  over  the  stone  wall  and  hang  their 
yellow  wealth  on  the  other  side ;  where  the  carrot  shreds  her  lovely  tresses, 
the  red-veined  beet  leaves  make  a  patch  of  color,  the  cabbages  are  like  apoth- 
eosized green  roses;  where  shady  grass-plots  are  left  about  apple-trees 
and  nut  trees,  about  some  one  pear-tree  famous  the  country  round,  some  rosy 
peach  or  bearer  of  translucent  plums ;  where  industry  and  idleness,  shadow 
and  sunshine,  pleasure  and  thrift,  are  blended  in  one  charming  composition ;  a 
place  sacred  to  long  sunny  mornings,  to  the  working  off  of  megrims;  where 
one  works  and  pretends  to  play,  where  one  plays  and  pretends  to  work ;  where 
one  dreams  of  the  subtile  chemistry  by  which  the  seed  he  buries,  with  the 
atoms  of  earth  and  ordure,  dew  and  sunshine,  around  it,  is  metamorphosed 
till  ashes  become  gold,  eking  out  a  narrow  income,  and  wakes  to  find  that,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  was  gold  he  buried  and  only  ashes  that  remain,  leaving  him 
profoundly  convinced  that  gold  is  not  one  of  the  original  metals,  since  he 
himself  has  reduced  it  to  its  constituent  elements  and  gases — a  place,  in  fact, 
which  one  discovers,  after  infinite  loss  and  disappointment,  is  the  sole  com- 
mon ground  of  two  great  classes  of  society,  and  can  belong  only  to  the  mil- 
lionaire or  to  the  day -laborer. 

We  were  neither  millionaires  nor  day-laborers,  but  when  we  moved  to 
Craigie  we  were  resolved  to  have  a  garden — "a  real  old-fashioned  kitchen- 
garden,  Royal,"  said  I. 

"It  takes  years  to  make  a  real  old-fashioned  garden,"  was  the  reply. 

"No;  only  money.  There  are  half  a  dozen  apple-trees  for  a  nucleus  al- 
ready, and  we  only  need  to  set  out  the  largest  raspberry  bushes  and  quinces 
that  can  bear  transplanting.  No,  it  will  only  take  money." 

"But  we  haven't  a  great  deal  of  money. " 

"We  don't  need  a  great  deal — just  enough  to  buy  our  top-dressing,  and 
have  the  earth  spaded  and  planted,  and  then  the  things  will  come  up  of  them- 
selves, you  know — we  can't  effect  that.  Major  Bayley  will  be  delighted  to 
give  us  some  dwarf  pears,  and  we  can  buy  a  few  standard  roses"- 

" Roses  in  a  kitchen-garden?" 

"Oh,  yes;  it  is  charming  to  come  upon  some  great  flower  when  you  are 
hunting  for  a  last  pod  of  peas — like  unexpected  wealth,  you  know.  And  we 


182 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


THE  HARVEST  OF  THE  GRAIN  FIELD. 

shall  get  a  mine  of  happiness  out  of  it,  and  save  the  cost  of  all  our  vegetables, 
and  have  some  to  give  away,  and  perhaps — yes,  very  probably — add  a  surplus 
to  our  income.  Oh,  I  wouldn't  be  without  a  kitchen-garden  on  any  account. 
I'd  rather  be  without  a  drawing-room.  There  was  no  use  in  moving  down  to 
Craigie  if  we  were  not  to  have  a  kitchen-garden.  " 

All  which  meant  that  Mr.  Royal  was  opposing  me  enough  to  make  me 
think  I  was  having  my  own  way,  when  in  reality  he  was  having  his,  and  in- 
tended a  kitchen-garden  from  the  start. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "if  you  really  will  have  the  garden — I  warn  you  it 
will  be  a  great  deal  of  trouble"- 

"Oh,  no  matter  about  the  trouble,"  said  I. 

"Well,  then,  the  first  thing  to  do  is  to  have  that  spot  ploughed — should 
have  been  done  last  fall,  and  the  sod  turned  up  to  rot." 

We  had  decided  upon  the  precise  place  at  last — on  the  south  side  of  the 
apple-trees,  having  quarreled  over  every  inch  of  ground,  sowed  it  with  salt 
and  watered  it  with  tears,  so  to  say,  in  our  endeavor  to  locate  the  garden  with 
reference  to  sunshine,  security,  privacy,  and  pleasure,  till  it  became  as  mem- 
orable to  us  as  the  landmarks  where  every  spring  the  old  Germans  used  to 
take  their  children  and  box  their  ears  solemnly  all  round  that  they  might 
never  forget  the  locality. 

"The  first  thing  to  do,"  repeated  Royal,  "is  to  have  the  ground  ploughed. 
It's  virgin  soil.  I  don't  believe  the  share  has  ever  turned  a  sod  of  it  since  the 
days  of  the  primeval  forest." 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  183 

Which  conjecture  was  a  sound  one,  as  we  discovered  next  day  when 
Neighbor  Weldon's  broken  ploughshare  assured  us  that  our  garden-plot  was 
founded  on  a  rock.  "Well,"  I  overheard  Royal  saying  to  the  men,  "my  wife 
has  set  her  heart  on  a  garden,  and  she  shall  not  be  disappointed.  We'll  have 
to  blast. "  And  so  for  a  day  or  two  the  click  of  drills  and  hammers  resounded, 
and  then  came  a  shock  as  if  heaven  and  earth  were  coming  together,  and  they 
had  blasted  indeed — a  premature  explosion  had  broken  every  window  on  that 
end  of  the  house,  and  cracked  the  parlor  mirror  from  side  to  side. 

Of  course  at  the  breaking  of  the  mirror  grandma  cried  out  in  horror,  and 
felt  that  she  had  lost  or  was  about  to  lose  every  friend  in  the  world,  and  I 
think  it  weighed  more  heavily  on  her  mind  than  Royal's  broken  arm  or  the 
hired  man's  burned  face.  But  his  arm  being  set  again,  Royal's  blood  was 
up;  fate  itself  now  was  not  going  to  balk  him  of  that  garden;  if  he  couldn't 
see  to  it,  I  must ;  and  we  went  on  blasting,  having  a  great  ox-team  to  haul 
out  the  broken  rock,  till  we  had  taken  out  ninety  tons  of  granite,  and  it  wasn't 
a  ledge  either,  going  into  central  earth,  but  just  some  drift  and  huge  boul- 
ders. "We  had  better  have  turned  it  into  a  quarry,"  growled  Royal.  "We 
might  have  made  our  fortune  at  that." 

"You  can't  quarry  drift  and  boulders;  they  give  out  presently.  And  if 
you  could,  it  would  have  been  a  fine  thing,  a  quarry,  with  hammering  and 
yelling  and  oxen  and  derricks  under  our  eyes  forever.  Mr.  Weldon  will  buy 
the  rock  of  you,  though;  he  wants  it  for  his  new  cellars." 

"He  can't  have  a  pebble  of  it!"  cried  Royal.  "I  shall  want  it  for  cellars 
of  my  own,  hen-houses  and  rockeries  and  things." 

"Ninet)7  tons  of  rocks!  Nonsense!  He  will  pay  you  twenty  dollars  for  it." 

"What's  twenty  dollars,  if  I  have  to  buy  stone  myself?" 

"But  there's  plenty  where  that  came  from." 

"No,  there  isn't.  I've  taken  out  the  last  splinter;  there  were  only  some 
enormous  fragments,  left  by  the  glacier,  perhaps,  that  scratched  those  cliffs 
out  there — no  permanent  wealth  of  stone. ' ' 

"But"— 

"Now  don't  let  us  discuss  that,  Prim.     He  can't  have  it." 

My  Christian  name  of  Primrose  had  become  a  sort  of  measurer  of  moods, 
for  when  Royal  was  vexed  he  always  said  "Prim,"  and  when  he  was  pleased 
he  always  called  me  "Rose." 

But  the  holes  left  by  that  ninety  tons  of  rock  were  something  appalling. 
"It's  the  greatest  undertaking  that  ever  I  undertook,"  said  Royal.  "We've 
not  only  to  make  the  garden,  but  really  to  make  the  earth  first." 

"But  when  it's  done  it  is  done,"  said  I.     "The  first  cost  is  all." 

"That's  so,"  he  answered  me.     "The  first  cost  is  all." 


l84  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

So  we  hauled  the  earth  from  a  distant  pasture,  where  it  was  black  as  a 
prairie  with  richness.  They  gave  us  the  earth  and  a  welcome,  but  it  cost  a 
dollar  a  load  to  haul  it,  and  we  had  two  hundred  loads. 

"Well,  now,  Rose,"  said  Royal,  as  we  walked  down  the  paths  that  had 
been  staked  out  about  the  beds,  "we  have  really  begun  the  garden." 

"And  how  lovely  it  will  be  to  sit  on  this  stone  wall  and  look  out  across 
the  sea  under  the  shadow  of  this  gnarled  old  russet  tree,  hidden  from  sight 
by' the  corn,  and  all  that,  growing  by  day  and  by  night,  and  bringing  us  in 
money  for  hardly  turning  our  hands  over!" 

"Yes,"  said  Royal,  "I  must  say  I  anticipate  a  great  deal  of  enjoyment  in 
seeing  these  things  come  forward." 

'Let  alone  all  that  about  benefactors  in  making  two  blades  of  grass  grow 
where  one  grew  before.  Oh,  Royal,  here's  a  bean  come  up!" 

"By  George!  so  it  is."  And  we  stood  over  that  absurd  little  cotyledon 
with  our  hands  clasped,  in  an  ecstasy,  as  if  it  were  the  first  thing  that  had 
ever  come  out  of  the  earth  since  creation. 

"Oh,  I  always  was  so  fond  of  beans!"  I  cried.  "Don't  you  remember 
Alphonse  Karr's  chapter  about  the  delights  he  could  trace  to  the  fact  that  the 
beans  were  in  blossom  ?  Oh,  I  am  so  glad !  The  armies  of  the  Crimea  got 
roast  beef  and  ice-cream  and  marmalade  from  their  beans  by  skillful  manipu- 
lation. Nobody  needs  to  starve  that  has  beans ;  and  you  know  Pythagoras 
deified  the  bean,  Royal,  and" 

"Yes,  I  know,  Rose,"  said  Royal,  laughing  at  me.  "But  it's  a  pity 
there  isn't  a  pea,  too.  I  suppose  the  birds  ate  up  the  radish  seeds,  but  I 
thought  perhaps  we  should  have  some  early  cucumbers.  Don't  you  suppose 
that  the  potatoes  mean  to  come  up  at  all?" 

Perhaps  the  spell  of  wet  weather  had  spoiled  the  planting ;  perhaps  the 

corn  and  peas  hadn't  been  soaked  long  enough;  perhaps But  there,  what 

use  is  it?  They  didn't  come  up,  and  we  planted  them  over  again.  Then 
when  the  corn  did  sprout  we  couldn't  quite  make  out  whether  it  was  grass  or 
corn,  and  had  to  let  weeds  and  all  grow  together  for  a  while  before  we  dared 
to  hoe ;  and  the  peas  were  so  late  that  when  they  came  straggling  along,  the 
hot  weather  shriveled  them  to  nothing.  But  the  beans — the  beans  were  sim- 
ply splendid.  The  cabbage  plants,  too,  were  quite  thriving,  and  the  tomatoes 
were  a  wilderness  of  green  leaves  and  strong  odors ;  the  squash  vines  were 
perfectly  rampant,  and  the  potatoes  really  began  to  hill  up.  I  was  sorry  about 
ths  peas;  there  was  a  white  mould  all  over  them  like  a  bloom — and  they 
never  had  any  other  bloom  to  speak  of — while  Royal,  who  had  dreams  of  a 
vineyard,  was  entirely  disgusted  with  the  fifty  dollars'  worth  of  grape-vines 
and  pear- trees  he  had  set  out,  the  leaves  on  the  latter  curling  up  in  a  curious 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    I^APPINESS. 


185 


MAKING  GROW  WHERE  NOTHING  GREW  BEFORE. 

fashion,  but  on  the  former  disappearing- altogether.     "By  George!  Prim,"  he 
exclaimed  at  last,  "it's  those  confounded  hens  of  yours!" 

Now  contumelious  mention  of  the  hens,  I  must  confess  it,  touched  a  sore 
spot.  They  were  the  prettiest  creatures  that  ever  stepped  as  if  the  earth 
were  not  fit  to  tread  on :  black  just  dusted  with  white,  and  with  the  loveliest 
great  cropple-crown  of  feathers  hanging  all  over  their  eyes.  To  be  sure,  I 
had  had  them  now  six  months,  and  they  had  never  laid  an  egg,  nor  shown 
any  disposition  to  hatch  a  chicken,  and  had  eaten  whole  bags  of  grain ;  but 
they  were  of  grand  family,  and  everybody  knows  that  Black  Polands  seldom 
lay,  and  never  set;  it's  enough  to  be  allowed  to  look  at  them.  These  in  par- 
ticular seemed  the  very  fairest  of  fowl ;  and  the  rooster,  with  his  long  plumes 
that  sometimes  tipped  him  backward,  his  dainty  ways,  and  delicate  outlines, 
never  reminded  me  of  anything  but  Oberon.  I  admit  that  I  should  have 
liked  to  see  some  little  Poland  chickens,  but  perhaps  I  shouldn't  have  thought 
half  as  much  of  those  hens  if  they  had  condescended  to  any  such  common- 
place thing  as  eggs.  "Oh!"  I  cried,  "oh,  my  hens!" 


,86  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

"Yes,"  said  he,  "your  hens.  If  those  hens  were  worth  a  rap,"  cried 
Royal,  severely,  "do  you  suppose  they'd  leave  these  things  on  the  vines?" 
and  he  held  up  a  branch  of  the  potatoes  thick  with  great  "brown  slimy  crea- 
tures. 

"I  suppose  that's  what's  destroying  the  pear-trees,  too, "  I   exclaimed, 

breaking  off  a  twig. 

"It's  just  inattention,"  he  cried.     "If   there'd   been   any  oversight  of 

things  at  all,  this  would  have  been  nipped  in  the  bud." 

" In  the  bug,  you  mean.     But  whose   inattention  is  this?"  and  I  tossed 

him  the  twig  of  the  pear-tree,  covered  with  just  as  nasty  a  brown  slug.     "I 

don't  suppose  I'm  to  climb  trees." 

"You  mean  to  infer  it  is  mine?"  he  exclaimed.     "I,    who  have  to  be  in 

town  all  day  long  in  order  to  get  enough  to  keep  up  this  intolerable  expense 

and  luxury,  coming  home  tired  out  with  my  day's  work,  must  hurry  out  here, 

and  toil  like  a  swinking  laborer!" 

"Well,  if  you  think  I've  nothing  to  do  but  to  spend  my  life  picking  bugs 

off  plants,  you — •  How — how  utterly  outrageous!  Oh,  I  never  imagined  you'd 

expect  anything  of  the  sort.     When  you  married  me,  you  said   the  winds   of 

heaven I  never  thought — I  wouldn't  have  believed" and  I  burst  into 

tears,  and  flounced  out  of  the  garden  and  into  the  house,  and  hid  myself  in 
my  sewing-room,  and  didn't  speak  to  Royal  all  night,  and  he  went  off  to  town 
in  the  morning  without  his  breakfast. 

Of  course  the  first  thing  I  did  after  that  was  to  send  for  a  quantity  of 
paris  green,  and  go  to  the  district  school  and  beg  a  half -holiday  for  all  the 
small  boys,  that  they  might  be  turned  into  my  garden,  armed  with  tin  pans, 
for  a  crusade  on  the  beetles.  They  trod  down  every  other  row  of  the  pota- 
toes, to  be  sure,  but  they  didn't  leave  a  beetle  on  the  place,  nor  a  penny  in  my 
purse.  Yet,  for  tear  of  accident,  1  sifted  the  paris  green  over  the  vines  thor- 
oughly, and  then  procured  ashes  from  the  house  and  paid  my  respects  to  the 
pear-tree  slugs.  A  strong  wind  was  blowing  at  the  time ;  and  although  I 
destroyed  the  slugs,  I  destroyed  my  gown  as  well,  the  ashes  clinging  ineradi- 
cably  to  the  fibre.  And  as  the  stupid  servant  had  brought  them  from  the 
range,  a  hot  cinder  blew  into  my  eye  and  fastened  itself,  and  when  Royal 
came  home  at  last  he  found  the  house  in  confusion,  with  the  doctor  just  com- 
ing, and  the  people  running  this  way  and  that,  and  my  eyes,  already  inflamed 
with  a  night's  crying,  in  a  condition  with  that  cinder  before  which  the  eyes 
of  Leah  would  have  had  to  pale  ineffectual  fires.  Of  course  it  was  all  his 
fault,  and  he  acknowledged  it  like  a  man,  and  we  had  a  reconciliation  that 
made  it  seem  as  if  we  had  just  become  engaged,  and  had  never  been  married 
at  all. 


JBBBimi^Hrai 


w   .~ 

S      5 


H      "3 


a     -g 

0     I 
w    -3 


l88  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

* 

"Well,  Rose,"  said  Royal,  "if  a  reconciliation  is  like  marriage,  a  quarrel 
is  like  divorce,  and  the  fewer  we  have  the  better." 

"Then  you  mustn't  call  me  names,"  said  I. 

"I  never  called  you  names,  Prim,"  said  he. 

"Oh,  how  can  you  say  so?"  I  cried.  And  I  suppose  we  should  straight- 
way have  plunged  into  another  skirmish  but  for  the  little  servant,  who  ran  in 
and  begged  me  to  go  out  to  the  garden. 

"Garden  be" began  Royal.  But  I  tied  a  handkerchief  over  my  aching 

eye,  and  we  went ;  and  there  lay  my  six  hens  and  their  lovely  little  lord  and 
master,  on  their  backs,  with  their  drooping  claws  in  the  air.  They  had  eaten 
the  paris  green,  and  had  been  exterminated. 

I  must  say  that  I  shed  tears  over  their  little  corpses,  but  not  very  bitter 
ones,  as  they  dried  themselves  on  the  discovery  that  the  golden  pippins  were 
ripe — a  cream-colored  apple  with  black  seeds  and  delicious  flesh  and  flavor. 
What  lovely  desserts  were  here !  what  crates  to  send  away  to  relatives  with 
watering  mouths,  what  baskets  to  friends  in  town !  What  was  there  so  choice 
as  a  smooth  yellow  apple,  warm  with  sunshine  ?  Who  blamed  Eve  ?  Why 
couldn't  we  have  an  apple-bee,  and  invite  everybody  to  the  picking?  We 
would.  The  next  morning  we  found  that  the  bee  had  been  held  over  night 
without  invitations.  Those  dreadful  little  boys  of  the  district  school  had  not 
been  in  the  garden  for  nothing ;  they,  too,  had  learned  that  the  pippins  were 
ripe,  and  there  was  not  an  apple  left  on  the  tree. 

"We  will  have  to  get  a  dog,"  said  Royal. 

We  got  a  dog.  When  that  dog  had  scratched  up  the  celery  trenches  for 
the  purpose  of  burying  his  bones  there,  had  rolled  in  the  asparagus  beds,  and 
the  carrots,  and  over  the  late-coming  cucumber  vines  till  they  were  worthless ; 
had  chased  the  calf  into  the  corn  just  as  it  was  ripening,  till  not  one  ear  was 
left  standing  on  another;  had  pulled  down  a  dozen  sheep,  and  brought  home 
as  many  dead  young  turkeys  from  the  neighbors',  for  all  of  which  we  had  to 
pay;  had  sensibly  added  to  the  butcher's  bill;  had  bayed  the  moon  till  sleep 
forsook  the  place ;  had  frightened  the  baby  into  fits,  and  had  given  the  rest 
of  us  a  hydrophobic  horror — we  began  to  think  him  as  doubtful  an  experi- 
ment as  the  garden.  He  was  fastened  upon  us,  but  celery,  asparagus,  car- 
rots, and  corn  had  fled.  However,  that  corn,  as  we  began  to  look  forward  to 
it,  had  developed  a  hideous  fungus,  so  that  nearly  every  ear  was  as  big  as  ten, 
and  that  was  to  be  subtracted  from  Bruno's  debtor  account.  "Well,"  I  said, 
"at  any  rate  there  are  going  to  be  millions  of  tomatoes;  they  are  just  redden- 
ing, and  we  shall  have  a  salad  of  them  by  day  after  to-morrow.  And  there 
will  be  quantities  for  chowchow  besides;  and  then,  with  ginger  and  lemon, 
you  know,  they  make  the  most  luscious  Oriental  sweetmeat  ^nd  you  really 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  189 

can't  tell  a  preserved  melon  from  citron;  so  Bruno  and  the  calf  did  some  good 
in  trampling  down  the  corn,  for  it  has  let  the  sun  in  on  the  melons. ' 

"What  melons?"  said  Royal. 

"Why,  the  water-melons,  and  nutmegs,  and"— 

"Do  you  see  any  there?"  he  asked. 

Upon  my  word,  not  one.  The  district  school  had  levied  on  that  melon 
patch,  and  we  might  have  perished  with  thirst,  for  all  the  imps  had  cared. 

"I  don't  care!"  I  exclaimed,  after  the  first  of  the  dismay.  "I  hate  mel- 
ons, anyway ;  they  always  taste  like  a  raw  squash,  and  they  are  full  of  cholera 
morbus;  while  a  tomato"- 

Alas !  what  was  that  clucking  under  the  tomato  plants  ?  I  bent  to  see  the 
cause,  and  beheld  the  whole  harem  of  Neighbor  Weldon's  black  Cochin  fowl 
comfortably  disposed  there,  and  not  a  tomato  of  them  all  that  those  bills  of 
theirs  had  not  broken  and  emptied.  It  was  no  use  to  shoo  those  hens  out  of 
the  garden  and  beyond  the  farthest  bounds  of  Craigie ;  they  seemed  to  de- 
scend out  of  the  air  or  come  up  out  of  the  ground ;  and  when  you  assured 
yourself  that  they  were  utterly  routed,  there  they  were  again  pecking  away 
at  the  tomatoes,  and  there  they  stayed  as  long  as  a  single  love-apple  did,  en- 
joying the  first-fruits  of  the  garden,  and  leaving  neither  sweetmeats  nor  chow- 
chow  to  us  for  second-fruits. 

I  pledge  you  my  word  that  by  this  time  Mr.  Royal  had  hedged,  pretend- 
ing that  the  garden  was  none  of  his,  but  a  little  indulgence  allowed  me,  and 
that  he  took  a  magnanimous  sort  of  interest  in  it  for  my  sake,  and  he  gave  him- 
self some  mild  merriment  over  it  at  my  expense.  Of  course  at  that  I  was  put 
to  my  trumps,  and  determined  to  have  something  from  that  garden.  We  had 
the  beans,  to  be  sure;  we  had  them  every  day,  and  out  of  the  necessity  of  my 
enthusiasms  I  was  compelled  nearly  to  live  upon  them.  They  certainly  were 
the  nicest  beans  I  ever  tasted.  But  the  only  other  thing  left  me  now  on  which 
there  was  any  possibility  to  make  or  keep  a  reputation  for  my  garden  was  a 
certain  squash  that  had  early  manifested  an  intention  of  distinguishing  itself. 
There  was  to  be  a  county  fair  and  agricultural  display,  and  if  I  could  but  take 
the  prize  for  my  squash,  would  Royal,  would  any  one,  dare  laugh  at  my  gar- 
den? Now  it  is  not  universally  known  that  near  the  stem  of  every  squash  is 
a  little  proboscis  which  it  puts  down  and  roots  round  within  the  earth,  and 
through  which  it  sucks  up  further  nourishment  than  that  given  by  the  roots. 
" Further  nourishment  it  shall  have,"  said  I.  And  I  secretly  brought  a  great 
flat  pan  of  milk  every  day,  and  set  it  down  beneath  the  vine,  lifting  the 
stem  carefully,  and  plunging  that  little  proboscis  into  the  contents,  and  you^ 
would  have  laughed  to  see  it  suck  up  the  whole  of  that  milk,  like  a  live  crea- 
ture, and  fairly  grow  beneath  your  eyes.  How  it  did  grow!  How  it 


,9o  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS 


stretched  its  great  yellow  sides  as  it  lay  warm  in  the  sun,  like  a  child  waking 
from  sleep !  I  began  to  get  fond  of  it,  and  to  experience  a  certain  gratitude 
toward  it  as  the  redeemer  of  the  garden's  good  name.  What  a  monster  it  was 
becoming!  I  trembled  for  a  time  lest  it  might  be  stolen  over  night,  but  at 
length  the  danger  was  past — it  was  too  heavy  for  mortal  thief.  Forty  pounds, 
fifty  pounds,  sixty  pounds:  it  grew  as  those  huge  balls  grow  that  boys  roll 
before  them  in  the  snow  till  they  are  higher  than  their  own  heads.  I  don't 
dare  to  say  it  was  a  hundred  pounds,  or  two  hundred  pounds,  or  a  ton — it 
never  was  weighed.  I  used  to  make  Royal  come  out  and  walk  round  it  ad- 
miringly with  me.  "By  George!"  he  used  to  say,  "there's  something  uncanny 
about  it.  I'm  afraid  of  it.  We'll  have  to  rig  a  derrick  to  get  it  to  the  fair!" 
The  derrick  was  a  couple  of  Irishmen ;  and  as  the  great  thing  rose  in  their 
arms,  big  as  the  moon  in  August  through-the  mist,  a  clumsy  foot  contrived  to 
slip,  and  over  went  Irishmen,  squash,  and  all,  in  an  indistinguishable  mass 
of  slush  and  pulp,  and  I  sat  down  and  cried. 

It  was  the  end  of  the  garden.  The  beans  had  all  been  stacked  and  dried 
and  threshed;  a  dozen  squashes,  misshapen  and  warty,  as  if  one  needed  prac- 
tice in  growing  them,  and  the  thimbleful  of  potatoes,  had  been  put  into  the 
cellar.  Everything  was  dry  and  sere  and  rustling;  presently  there  came  a 
black  frost  as  if  a  fire  had  run  along  the  ground.  I  went  out  and  pottered 
about  the  forsaken  beds  now  and  then ;  but  it  was  generally  thought  in  the 
family  that  the  subject  of  the  garden  was  one  best  to  avoid  in  conversation 
with  me;  and  at  last  the  snow  came  and  covered  all  that  battle-ground  with 
a  robe  of  peace,  and  we  forgot  about  the  thing. 

One  day  a  robin  twittered  under  the  window;  a  bit  of  sunshine  lay  so 
warm  there  that  I  saw  a  snow-drop  piercing  the  moist  ground  with  his  shin- 
ing little  helmet;  I  thought  I  saw  a  blue-bird's  wing;  certainly  the  biids  were 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  191 

swelling;  it  was  time  to  think  of  the  garden.  There  had  been  a  great  snow- 
fall, and  it  had  suddenly  melted  under  a  few  strong  suns,  in  pools  and  streams 
of  water,  and  now  there  came  a  week's  steady  down-pour  of  rain,  enough  to 
soak  through  to  the  nadir.  "I'm  sure  it's  lucky  they  have  tanka  boats  in 
China,  Royal,"  said  I,  waking  up  one  morning  and  hearing  the  steady  down- 
pour still.  "The  whole  population  will  take  refuge  in  them  if  this  lasts  much 
longer.  It  will  have  flooded  Symmes'  Hole  by  this  time  and  washed  it  out, 
so  that  we  may  expect  to  see  great  things  floating  down  from  the  pole  this 
summer.  There  can't  be  any  drought  this  year  with  the  ground  so  soaked. 
What  do  you  say  about  the  garden,  Royal?" 

"What  do  you  say?"  said  Royal.  "I  don't  know.  It  hardly  seems  worth 
while." 

"Worthwhile?" 

"Well,  let  us  cast  it  up." 

"Cast  up  the  garden?" 

"I  mean  the  cost  of  it,  of  course.  What  are  you  so  irritable  about?  Let 
me  see — debit:  a  broken  ploughshare,  drilling,  blasting  powder,  hire  of  men, 
teams,  and  oxen,  the  doctor's  bill  for  my  broken  arm,  the  glazier's  bill  for 
the  windows,  a  new  mirror,  the  price  of  two  hundred  loads  of  muck,  wages  of 
a  man  for  ninety  days,  seeds,  paris  green,  district  school  boys,  price  of  pota- 
toes destroyed,  of  your  dress  ruined  by  ashes,  apples  stolen,  melons  stolen,  of 
the  dog,  of  all  the  mischief  that  he  did,  of  six  hens  and  the  cock  poisoned, 
of"- 

"Oh,    my  goodness!     As  if  there  were  no  credit  to  the  garden  side!' 

"Yes;  I  was  coming  to  that  eventually:  one  bushel  of  potatoes,  a  dozen 
small  squashes,  one  mess  of  tomatoes,  ninety  messes  of  beans." 

"And  a  world  of  pleasure!"  I  cried. 

"Well,  you  may  call  it  so,  Prim.  I  can  find  more  pleasure  for  the  same 
money  in  some  other  way.  Every  one  of  those  beans  cost  more  than  if  it 
vhad  been  raised  in  a  hothouse." 

"Well,  I  declare!" 

"Do  you  call  it  pleasure  to  have  the  sharp  edge  of  a  hundred-weight  of 
stone  snap  your  bones  like  a  cleaver,  as  my  arm"- 

"You  have  plenty  to  say  about  your  arm,  but  I  don't  hear  a  word  about 
my  eye." 

"Oh"- 

"I  know  exactly  what  you  were  going  to  say,  Royal.  You  were  going  to 
say,  'Hang  my  eye!'  "  But  just  then  a  hand  was  clapped  over  my  mouth. 

"Not  another  word,"  said  Royal,  "or  we  shall  quarrel  again,  and  we 
haven't  quarreled  since  that  wretched  garden  has  been  covered  up;  and  I 


392  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

wouldn't  quarrel  with  you  to-day  for  the  Garden  of  Eden!     Don't  you  know 
what  day  it  is,  Rose?" 

And  in  consideration  of  its  being  the  anniversary  of  something — we  had 
so  many  anniversaries,  from  the  day  when  we  first  made  mouths  at  each  other 
as  children  to  the  day  when  we  first  made  love  to  each  other  as  grown  people ! 
—I  was  about  to  express  my  forgiveness,  when  there  came  the  strangest  shock 
and  shatter  and  crash  you  ever  knew,  so  that  the  bed  rocked,  and  the  brackets 
pitched,  and  my  very  eyes  shook  in  their  sockets.  And  as  at  the  same  instant 
there  rose  a  terrible  yelping  from  Bruno,  I  sprang  to  the  window.  "Oh, 
Royal!  Royal!"  I  cried,  "what  has  happened  to  the  garden?" 

He  sprang  to  my  side,  and  looked  over  to  the  cliff.  There  wasn't  any 
garden  there.  A  tremendous  land-slide,  whether  caused  by  the  rains  or  by 
an  earthquake  shock,  had  scooped  it  out  as  neatly  as  one  cuts  with  a  knife, 
and  the  great  sheet  of  earth  and  boulders,  with  the  young  plum-trees  and  the 
dwarf  pears  and  the  old  apples,  was  sweeping  down,  and  taking  Bruno  with 
it,  and  burying  itself  in  the  sea  with  a  gigantic  plunge  and  hiss  and  roar, 
leaving  only  an  unfathomable  bed  of  dry  sand  in  the  hollow  behind  it.  "So 
that  settles  it,"  said  I.  "Nature  takes  your  side.  The  stars  in  their  courses 
fight  against  Sisera.  What  a  pity,"  I  cried,  in  a  sudden  fury,  "that  there 
wasn't  a  land-slide  in  the  Garden  of  Eden  that  would  have  carried  Eve  and 
her  apple  over  the  edge,  and  left  the  world  alone  to  Adam  and  you  men!" 

"There  was,"  said  Royal;  "and  the  apple  of  discord  has  taken  root  here. 
Yes,  that  settles  it,"  said  Royal,  complacently.  "And  now  we'll  have  to  buy 
our  vegetables. ' ' 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  193 


CHAPTER  EIGHTH. 


The  House  in  the  Country. 

Not  a  mouse 
Shall  disturb  this  hallowed  house. 

— Shakespeare. 

I  can  tell  you  why  a  snail  has  a  house.     Why?    Why,  to  put's  head  in. 

— Shakespeare. 

Sir,  he  made  a  chimney  in  my  father's  house,  and  the  bricks  are  alive  at  this  day  to  tes- 
tify it. — Shakespeare. 

The  stately  homes  of  England 

How  beautiful  they  stand, 

Amid  their  tall  ancestral  trees, 

O'er  all  the  pleasant  land! 

— Felicia  D.  Hemans. 

And  hie  him  home  at  evening's  close 
To  sweet  repast  and  calm  repose. 

—  Thomas  Gray. 

In  Xanadu  did  Kubla  Khan 
A  stately  pleasure-dome  decree. 

— Coleridge. 

I  knew  by  the  smoke  that  so  gracefully  curled 

Above  the  green  elms  that  a  cottage  was  near, 
And  I  said,  "If  there's  peace  to  be  found  in  the  world 

The  heart  that  was  humble  might  hope  for  it  here." 

— Moore. 

This  castle  hath  a  pleasant  seat ;  the  air 
Nimbly  and  sweetly  recommends  itself. 

— Shakespeare. 

The  house  of  every  one  is  to  him  as  his  castle  and  fortress,  as  well  for  his  defence  against 
injury  and  violence  as  for  his  repose. — Sir  Edward  Coke. 


Necessary  Foresights. 

One  approaches  the  house  through  the  garden,  and  having  made  sure  of  a 
pleasaunce  there,  it  is  tolerably  certain  that  the  house  is  going  to  be  a  sort  of 
a  pleasaunce,  too.  In  the  first  place  ,it  has  been  oriented  in  the  right  way, 


194 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


squared  to  the  southeast,  so  that  the  sun  comes  into  every  room  in  it  at  least 
once  a  day,  and  in  some  rooms  lies  all  day  long.  Besides  being  supplied  with  this 
wealth  of  sun,  it  has  been  remembered  that  another  requisite  of  health,  and  so  of 
happiness,  is  pure  water;  and  care  has  been  taken  that  the  well,  if  there  is  no 
high-spring  to  pipe  into  the  house,  is  more  than  a  hundred  feet  from  any  drain, 
and  so  a  multitude  of  poisonous  microbes  has  been  kept  at  a  distance.  And  when 
everything  else  to  give  comfort  in  the  house  has  been  foreseen,  one  thing  more 
will  be  thought  of,  and  almost  before  the  house  is  built  its  owners  shall  make 
sure  cf  a  piazza. 

The  Piazza. 

For  both  country  and  seaside  life  in  America  during  the  summer  season, 
and  even  for  a  part  of  the  winter,  has  become  largely  an  affair  of  the  piazza,  or, 
as  it  is  more  prettily  styled  throughout  the  South  and  Southwest,  of  the  gallery — 
has  become  a  sort  of  out-door  existence,  in  which  there  is  all  heaven  to  breathe 
and  all  heaven's  light  to  see  by. 

It  is  no  longer  the  little  skimped  piazza,  of  old  times  with  which  people 
now  content  themselves,  where  one  could  scarcely  stretch  a  sea-chair  without 
dangling  one's  feet  over  the  edge  of  the  place,  that  hardly  served  to  shade  a 
seat  anywhere  at  noonday  and  was  as  barren  as  the  plank  sidewalk  of  a  muddy 
town ,  nor  is  it  the  imposing  Grecian  imitation  of  an  ancient  portico  whose  pil- 
lars soar  above  the  ceiling  of  the  second-story  rooms,  and  whose  use  nobody 
can  conjecture,  since  nobody  ever  sat  upon  it.  So  long  as  architectural  appen- 
dages of  the  nature  of  these  were  the  sole  piazzas  known  to  the  country  or  the 
country  town,  people  lived  inside  their  dwellings,  hot  and  stuffy  as  they  might 
be ;  nor  could  they  ever  cool  off  these  dwellings  as  might  be  done  with  open 
doors  and  windows,  as  they  can  now  when  the  burning  outer  air  gets  its  first 
cooling  in  the  lovely  out-door  room  which  the  modern  piazza  makes;  and  they 
consequently  lived  in  a  far  less  wholesome  atmosphere  than  that  which  it  is 
possible  to  enjoy  to-day. 

Not  but  that  homes  are  healthy  without  piazzas,  which  are  not  an  absolute 
necessity  of  existence,  but  that  generous  piazzas  are  one  of  the  many  allevia- 
tions with  which  this  generation  surrounds  itself,  and  the  benefit  of  which  will  be 
shown  in  the  superior  health  and  vigor  and  bloom  of  the  generations  to  follow. 

Any  piazza,  no  matter  if  it  is  the  merest  open  porch,  of  no  size,  compara- 
tively speaking,  dresses  a  house  out  more  or  less  agreeably,  especially  if  it  be 
itself  dressed  with  vines,  and  not  to  drape  it  with  vines  is  not  to  curtain  one's 
windows  or  ornament  one's  house  in  any  respect.  The  vine  in  its  infancy  costs 
but  a  few  cents  if  bought;  costs  only  a  thank- you  if  begged  from  a  friend  ; 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS  195 

costs  only  a  walk  if  brought  home  from  the  woods,  as  the  sweet-brie*  c*nd  the 
Virginia  creeper  can  be  brought  any  day;  and  this  vine,  if  set  out  at  night-fall 
and  well  watered  for  one  season  will  take  care  of  itself  forever  after,  and  no 
costly  art  of  the  florist  can  equal  the  superb  effect  of  the  long-continuing  scarlet 
bunches  of  blossom  on  the  luxuriant  trumpet  flower,  or  the  huge  waving  pur- 
ple feather  of  the  wistaria  that  twists  and  climbs  from  the  piazza  to  the  top  of 
the  house,  and  looks  back  to  shake  its  resplendent  plumes  in  the  wind  and  sun. 

The  architects  of  most  of  our  late  houses,  so  far  as  those  houses  have  archi- 
tects, are  prone  to  remember  all  this,  and  in  the  place  of  the  three-foot-wide 
shelf  of  olden  time,  they  make  something  that  is  almost  an  integral  part  of  the 
house,  and  only  fails  to  be  a  room  through  the  want  of  walls,  at  once  a  part  of 
the  house  and  a  part  of  all  out-doors.  These  modern  piazzas  are  as  large  ai 
the  usual  rooms  of  the  house,  and  seem  larger  yet  through  the  want  of  in- 
closure  ;  they  are  raised  from  the  ground  and  kept  cool  with  under-.currents  of 
air  ;  they  are  very  lofty,  but  are  intended  to  be  shaded  with  vines  or  cheerful 
awnings.  Pots  of  semi-tropical  plants  adorn  them,  great  rosy  oleanders  and 
mysterious  cacti,  that  country  people  always  seem  to  know  how  to  grow,  slip 
propagating  slip  from  one  neighbor  to  the  other,  and  in  statelier  houses,  be- 
sides these,  there  will  be  the  more  expensive  palms  and  other  frailer  exotics 
appearing.  Here  and  there  a  curtain  flaps  in  the  breeze  across  these  airy 
piazzas  ;  doors  open  on  them,  and  windows  level  with  the  floor  ;  there  are 
canvas  and  rattan  lounges  ;  there  are  sea- chairs,  telling  of  foreign  travel  by 
members  of  the  family  ;  there  are  those  willow  woven  articles  of  superlative 
comfort  that  are  carried  about  the  land  swung  on  the  sides  of  huge  wagons  ; 
there  are  wicker  stands  and  baskets,  and  desks  and  tables,  too,  that  rain  and  sun 
&re  not  going  to  ruin,  gay  ribbons  wrought  in  which,  even  when  the  ribbons 
are  only  bright  tapes  and  calicoes,  make  the  whole  effect  still  more  charming. 
The  ease,  and  one  might  almost  say  the  abandon,  of  this  pleasant  spot  are 
equaled  not  even  by  the  famous  "  mother's  room  "  of  the  inside  house. 

Here  is  the  cradle  brought,  that  the  child  may  sleep  with  all  the  sweet  air 
in  the  world  about  it,  lulled  by  the  birds'  song,  the  bees'  hum — for  the  birds 
will  sing  in  the  poorest  sidewalk  tree,  and  the  bees  will  hum  wherever  a  leaf 
opens,  in  the  hope  that  it  may  have  a  flower  behind  it — and  here  that  child, 
well  protected,  will  gather  strength  twicefold  over  that  given  by  sleep  in  com- 
paratively closer  quarters.  Here,  also,  is  the  caller  received,  the  negligt  in  the 
nature  of  the  place  making  stately  dress  a  thing  to  be  dispensed  with,  and  allow 
ing  the  sewing,  the  writing,  the  restful  lounging,  to  go  on  as  if  all  that  were  proper 
to  the  hour  and  spot.  Here,  moreover,  in  this  out-door  room — if  the  country 
custom  of  the  hearty  noon  meal  is  followed  with  tea  and  a  lighter  repast  at  sun- 
set— is  the  tea-table  often  laid,  perhaps  at  first  with  a  little  more  trouble  to  the 


196  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

maids,  perhaps,  in  the  long  run,  with  not  so  much,  in  so  far  as  floors  are  easier 
to  sweep  than  carpets,  and  such  absence  of  formality  as  the  habit  of  the  place 
allows  making  also  an  absence  of  steps  and  work.  It  is  always  an  elastic  tea- 
•table,  too,  in  that  tea-room  where  there  are  so  often  apt  to  be  other  guests  than 
breezes  and  bird  songs  and  flower  scents,  for  one  may  take  one's  cup  to  any 
cozy  corner  of  the  place,  or  one  may  be  waited  on  without  leaving  one's  ham- 
mock or  settee,  and  there  is  always  the  same  sort  of  space  for  another. 

In  fact,  the  piazza  of  to-day  is  a  living-room,  with  all  out-doors  as  a  friend ; 
one  sleeps,  works,  reads,  plays,  eats  there,  and  one  even  dances  there,  if  dance 
one  must  when  the  thermometer  is  up  among  the  high  figures.  In  this  lofty 
and  deep  piazza,  where  it  is  only  the  ever  welcome  and  level  beams  of  sunset 
and  sunrise  which  can  :tall  straight  across  it,  there  are  always  spots  of  cool 
shadow  where  one  may  lie  with  a  book,  undisturbed  by  flickering  sun  and 
shadow  falling  elsewhere  in  the  inclosure;  and  what  a  charm  is  added  to  the 
book  by  this  atmosphere  in  which  one  reads  it,  an  atmosphere  that  seems  a 
very  part  of  the  blue  of  the  sky  or  the  green  of  that  forest  sending  its  avant- 
courier  in  the  shadow  of  the  maple  or  the  linden  at  the  comer !  And  then  in 
pure  idleness,  that  necessary  fooi  for  nerves  and  soul  and  body,  how  great  is 
the  charm  of  lying  there  and  doing  nothing,  any  more  than  the  leaf  that  shakes 
outside,  and  how  familiar  we  become  with  certain  aspects  of  nature  without  the 
physical  exertion  of  leaving  our  own  vine  and  fig-tree,  while  here  again  at  night 
at  last  we  learn  the  secrets  of  the  stars  themselves !  Take  it  for  all  in  all,  it 
seems  to  us  that  the  large  and  lofty  vine-shaded  summer  piazza  is  a  blessing 
added  to  life  that  has  a  right  to  put  in  rival  claims  with  the  telephone,  the 
bicycle,  the  electric  light  and  the  ocean  cable,  more  humble  perhaps,  but  giving 
quite  as  much,  if  not  more,  happiness  to  a  larger  multitude. 


The  Furnishing. 

But  the  house  having  been  built,  whether  with  piazza  and  vine,  or  with- 
out it,  with  what  pleasure  and  zest  do  its  owners  move  into  it  ?  There  is  usu- 
ally a  too  goodly  quantity  of  half -worn  furniture  on  hand,  and  one  is  not  in  any 
such  degree  responsible  for  the  taste  and  skill  shown  in  the  arrangement  of  the 
new  house,  as  if  everything  had  been  to  buy  afresh,  and  there  had  been  the 
opportunity  to  exercise  taste  and  choice,  and  fit  everything  exactly  to  the  place 
for  which  it  is  most  suitable.  If  one,  for  instance,  has  old  carpets,  and  can 
not  afford  to  dispense  with  them,  they  must  be  ripped  and  turned  and  sewed 
over  and  made  to  answer  in  the  new  rooms  and  it  is  they,  inanimate  rags  as 
they  are,  that  settle  the  question  of  the  color  of  this  or  that  room,  and  not  you, 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS 


197 


although  you  fancy  yourselves  ever  so  much  the  monarch  of  all  you  survey. 
There  is,  however,  frequently  the  chance  to  show  skill  and  taste  in  the  adapta- 
tion of  the  old  to  the  new,  till  it  looks  like  design,  and  design  that  nothing 
could  have  improved  upon ;  and  there  are  many  who  derive  the  greatest  satis- 
faction from  this  exercise  of  their  ingenuity,  like  that  good  wife  who  trusted  her 
husband  never  would  be  so  rich  that  she  should  not  ba  obliged  to  contrive  how 
to  make  both  ends  meet  and  be  praised  for  doing  it. 

Yet  even  if  one  has  a  purseful  of  money  and  no  restriction  or  responsibility 
to  another  in  its  expenditure,  the  task  of  buying  exactly  what  is  best  and  every- 
thing that  is  harmonious  is  by  no  means  an  easy  one,  and  in  reality  requires 
days,  if  not  weeks,  of  considering  and  balancing  the  advantages  and  disad- 
vantages, and  of  afterward  regretting  that  the  other  thing  had  not  been  pro- 
cured instead,  and  finally  of  being  reconciled  to  the  inevitable,  and  of  adding 
some  touch  to  it  that  shall  make  it  just  right  after  all. 

The  first  thing  to  be  determined  on  is  to  present  a  thought  of  solidity  and 
comfort  to  the  new-comer  opening  the  hall  door,  and  glad  to  step  beneath  the 
shade  of  the  lintel.  This,  can  hardly  be  done  if  there  is 
any  patchwork  in  the  appearance  of  things;  if  patchwork 
must  needs  be,  it  must  be  of  the  richest  description  and 
of  such  effect  as  an  inlaid  floor  and  warm  and  handsome 
rugs  supply,  and  the  carpets  in  the  rooms  opening  on 
either  hand  in  very  brilliant  contrasts,  or  else  simply  as- 
cending in  the  same  tone  from  the  main  groundwork  of 
color  that  the  hall  presents.  But,  to  be  done  well,  this 
takes  costly  material,  and  those  who  cannot  afford  that 
would  do  better  to  cover  their  whole  ground-floor 
with  one  and  the  same  inexpensive  carpeting, 
which  gives  an  air  of  harmony  to  the  whole 
of  the  house  in  the  first  place,  while  each  room 


198  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

can  be  built  up  into  its  separate  picture  with  its  own  upholstery  and  uecoration. 
The  inexpensive  carpet  is  always  the  best,  unless  one  can  provide  those  of  the 
costly  and  indestructible  kind,  for  it  can  be  replaced  without  ruin,  and  one  is 
not  obliged  to  become  weary  of  it  and  still  to  keep  it,  till  it  shows  the  very 
threads  on  which  it  was  woven  and  is  an  eye-sore  of  the  worst  sort.  Never- 
theless, the  carpet  should  be  one  of  which  it  will  be  difficult  to  weary,  and  to 
that  end  it  should  be  as  quiet  a  figure  as  possible,  and  in  whatever  color  chosen 
that  color  should  certainly  be  of  pure  tint.  The  pure  tint  is  the  only  one  that 
wears  ;  the  mixed  and  muddy  mongrel  tints  become  in  a  season  utterly 
detestable. 

Most  people  think  that  when  they  have  set  up  a  hat  rack  and  an  umbrella 
stand  in  the  hall  they  have  done  all  that  could  be  expected ;  and  if  there  is  a 
little  glass  in  the  hat-rack,  that  then  the  effect  is  sumptuous,  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  a  chair  or  sofa  seems  almost  too  much  luxury.  Yet  a  slight  reflection 
would  tell  them  that  the  appearance  of  the  hall  is  of  as  much  importance  as 
that  of  any  room  in  the  house,  and  not  impossibly  a  little  more  so,  for  it  is  that 
which  first  strikes  the  guest  and  gives  to  him  the  key-note  of  the  house.  It 
stands  to  reason,  then,  that  the  hall  should  be  an  attractive  spot  at  the  first 
glance,  giving  the  guest  a  desire  to  penetrate  farther,  and  should  never  be 
suffered  to  remain  a  mere  entry  and  passage-way.  Here  family  portraits  should 
be  hung,  like  faces  to  make  each  comer  welcome,  your  ancestors,  if  you  have 
their  likenesses,  welcoming  your  guests  with  you,  silently  depicting  to  them 
your  traits  and  characteristics,  perhaps,  and  always  looking  down  on  your  own 
going  out  and  coming  in.  And  here,  too,  should  be  hung  any  pictures  particu- 
larly portraying  the  peculiarity  of  the  ways  and  tastes  of  the  family;  here 
should  stand  the  old  clock;  here  should  be  a  pretty  table  for  chance  objects  to 
be  tossed  on,  two  or  three  quaint  chairs,  certainly  a  mirror,  and  if  there  is  an 
alcove  beneath  the  stairs,  a  lounge  where  an  after-dinner  rest  that  shall  not  be 
a  nap  may  be  taken  while  the  summer  wind  blows  through  from  door  to  door. 
The  hall,  in  fact,  may  be  made  as  inviting  as  any  place  in  all  the  house,  and  if 
it  is  an  empty  and  bare  spot,  one  is  very  apt  to  expect  the  rest  of  the  house  to 
be  in  character. 

It  is  the  drawing-room,  or  parlor,  if  you  prefer  to  call  it  so,  in  which  the 
strongest  interest  of  the  furnishing  usually  centers.  We  will  not  say  that  it 
should  be  the  kitchen,  since  we  are  looking  rather  at  the  aesthetic  and  artistic 
side,  and  will  leave  to  every  housewife  her  own  kitchen.  And,  indeed,  the 
drawing-room  is,  if  not  of  as  much  importance,  at  least  worthy  of  separate  con- 
sideration, for  everybody  does  not  see  the  kitchen  and  everybody  does  see  the 
drawing-room ;  and  the  opinion  which  our  friends  form  of  us  by  our  action  and 
surroundings  is  of  real  consequence  in  the  sum  total  of  our  happiness,  and  the 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  199 

drawing-room  depends  largely  upon  ourselves,  the  kitchen  largely  upon  the 
will  of  Bridget 


The  Parlor. 

Not  that  we  underrate  in  the  least  the  vital  part  of  the  kitchen  in  the 
household,  but  we  are  speaking  particularly  of  appearances.  Moreover,  since 
every  day  the  drawing-room  or  parlor  invests  us  with  its  beauty,  or  want  of 
beauty,  and  is  or  is  not  delightful,  it  is  for  our  interest  and  advantage  to  make 
it  so,  in  order  that  our  daily  sights  may  not  increase  the  disagreeable  sensa- 
tions that  may  be  in  our  lot,  but  may  rather  ameliorate  them.  Little  things 
will  do  this  quite  as  easily  as  large  ones.  If  the  furniture  is  old,  coverings  of 
soft-toned  chintz,  of  unbleached  cotton  cloth,  trimmed  at  brief  intervals  with 
stripes  of  plain  colored  calicoes,  will  cover  it  and  brighten  the  effect  past  belief. 
Little  brackets,  even  home-made,  but  hung  so  that  the  rude  manufacturing  is 
concealed  with  pretty  fancy-work,  simple  ornaments  of  no  priceless  material, 
but  of  some  perfect  outline,  a  vase,  a  candle-stick,  a  Pompeiian  lamp,  books, 
books  in  abundance,  and  flowers — all  these,  arranged  with  care  and  purpose, 
make  up  the  cheerful,  lovely  aspect  of  a  room,  till  it  is  as  much  a  pleasure  to  go 
into  it  as  if  one  should  see  the  picture  of  some  charming  interior  all  at  once 
take  reality  upon  itself  and  surround  us  in  still  life  with  all  the  charm  of  art. 

The  first  thing  to  secure  in  any  room,  and  especially  in  any  room  bearing 
a  peculiar  home  character,  is  the  mantel — no  mere  slice  of  marble  set  on  iron 
brackets,  but  the  real  chimney-piece  going  from  floor  to  ceiling,  growing  out  of 
the  central  part  of  the  house,  the  protector  of  the  fire  upon  the  hearth.  The 
room  without  a  mantel  is  an  atrocity,  and  has  no  right  to  be  inhabited  ;  for  the 
mantel  always  represents  the  altar  of  home.  To  the  mantel,  then,  everything 
in  the  house  should  lead  ;  it  should  be  either  the  white  and  culminating  point 
of  splendor  in  the  room,  from  which  everything  retreats,  or  should  be  the  body 
of  shadow  to  which  everything  tends.  It  should  be  the  one  chief  thing  in  the 
room  which  first  salutes  the  eye  ;  in  it  centres  the  great  idea  of  hospitality,  for 
there  is  light  and  warmth,  and  should  be  space  ;  it  stands  for  host  and  hostess 
to  the  guest ;  and  it  stands,  too,  for  infinitely  more,  since  in  these  days  of  pub- 
licity it  is  the  one  remaining  representative  of  the  old  Lares  and  Penates,  the 
shrine  of  the  gods  of  home  and  the  hearth,  of  domestic  privacy  and  seclusion. 
If  this  one  thing  is  remembered  and  attended  to,  there  are  scarcely  any  circum- 
stances under  which  the  room  can  be  unlovely,  and  the  result  is  tolerably 
certain,  if  care  is  taken  to  avoid  a  spotty  effect  by  arranging  the  furniture  and 
the  pictures  in  masses  with  a  view  to  equivalents  in  light  and  shade  ;  that  is, 
if  a  table  leads  to  a  piano,  and  the  piano  to  a  lofty  painting  behind  it,  other 


ITSELF  DRAPED  WITH  VINES. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  201 

furniture  in  another  part  of  the  room  shall  be  arranged  to   balance  it   with 
corresponding,  even  if  totally  different,  effect. 

The  color  of  the  parlor  is  a  matter  deserving  more  than  a  passing  thought 
or  an  indulging  fancy.  There  are  reasons  of  complexion  to  be  considered,  of 
place,  and  of  suitability  ;  for  because  one  happens  to  love  a  certain  color,  one 
can  not  rush  into  it  without  reflection.  There  are  few  colors  so  rich  and  warm 
as  the  crimsons,  for  example  ;  but  used  in  the  steamboats  and  hotels,  where 
the  average  American  takes  his  splendor,  they  have  unfortunately  been  vul- 
garized out  of  most  houses.  As  lovely  a  drawing-room  as  we  ever  saw,  in 
point  of  color,  was  carpeted  with  gray  felt  with  a  deep  dull  blue  bordering  ; 
the  lounges  and  chairs  were  covered  with  chintz  in  the  most  delicate  shade  of 
robin's  egg  or  gas-light  blue,  as  the  wool  dealers  call  it,  and  the  remainder  was 
of  wicker-work  and  black  lacquer  ;  the  heavy  pieces  of  furniture  were  in  black 
lacquer  and  gilt  ;  the  curtains  were  of  snowy  muslin  under  lambrequins  of  the 
chintz  ;  and  the  rest  of  the  room  was  made  up  of  vases,  tripods,  cups,  pictures, 
flowers  and  sunshine,  till  it  seemed  to  overflow  with  harmonious  color.  But 
perhaps  glory  can  go  no  farther  in  furnishing  than  in  a  yellow  drawing-room  ; 
there  the  splendor  of  color  demanding  splendor  of  material,  lustre  answers 
lustre,  and  you  have  a  room  where  in  the  gloomiest  weather  the  sun  seems  to 
be  shining,  and  where  the  lovely  yellow  radiance  of  an  October  woodland  is 
perpetually  shed. 

The    Library. 

Whatever  riddle  the  drawing-room  may  read  to  its  decorator,  she  finds  re- 
lief from  embarrassment  when  she  comes  to  the  library,  for  that  is  a  room  that 
may  be  said  to  furnish  itself,  since  there  is  little  place  in  a  library  for  any  but 
conventional  treatment,  and  the  rest  remains  almost  altogether  with  the  wealth 
or  with  the  connoisseurship  of  the  owner.  The  dining-room,  however,  is  quite 
another  thing. 

The  Dining-Room. 

It  has  been  far  too  customary,  among  those  of  us  who  have  not  unlimited 
bank  accounts,  to  look  upon  the  dining-room  as  a  mere  place  to  go  and  eat  in 
and  get  out  of  as  soon  thereafter  as  possible.  But  the  dining-room  is  the  one 
place  where,  morning,  noon  and  night,  all  the  family  come  together,  and  are 
obliged  to  do  so,  at  the  same  time.  Certainly  such  a  place  as  that  should  be 
made  as  attractive  as  any  in  the  house.  Besides,  it  is  the  place  where  the  bur- 
den of  hospitality  is  dispensed,  and  certainly  there  should  be  nothing  there  to 


ao2  STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 

suggest  to  the  receivers  of  that  hospitality  any  poverty  or  pinching,  any  fancy 
that  the  table  is  differently  served  in  their  absence,  any  vexing  hint  that  the 
family  disturbs  its  equanimity  on  their  account.  Thus  the  dining-room  should 
really  be  as  sumptuous  a  room  as  it  is  possible  to  make  it;  here  the  rich  color 
and  the  gilding  should  be  lavished  ;  here  should  be  displayed  all  the  painted 
china  and  frosted  silver  and  other  objects  of  kindred  luxury  in  possession, 
something  less  being  paid  for  the  piano-forte  that  something  more  may  be  paid 
for  the  buffet,  and  here  should  be  warmth  and  light  and  all  reminders  of  com- 
fort and  cheer.  And  if  the  young  mistress  of  the  house  once  looks  after  these 
matters  with  a  view  to  finding  the  reason  for  all  things,  these  hints  may  light 
her  on  the  way  to  still  further  discovery  of  how  to  make  house  and  home 
delightful.  Still,  a  country  house  can  be  made  as  attractive  as  it  needs  to  be 
with  chintz  and  wicker-work,  leaving  all  these  splendors  for  the  town  house 
that  is  so  much  more  occupied.  How  precious  a  house  can  be  to  one,  whether 
of  one's  building  or  of  one's  grandfather's,  in  the  city  or  the  country,  the  story 
of  the  Rosillon  House  tells  us,  and  here  it  is. 


The  Rosillon  House. 

If  it  had  not  been  his  father's  house  and  the  house  of  his  father  before  him 
it  would  not  have  been  so  much  a  matter  of  moment  to  Mr.  Rosillon.  He  re- 
membered the  place  when  he  was  a  boy  and  when  it  had  seemed  no  less  than 
an  ante-room  to  some  heaven  of  warmth,  rich  hues  and  sumptuous  material 
atmosphere.  And  then  it  had  become  his  father's  property,  and  the  family 
had  lived  there  together,  and  the  life  was  gay  and  sweet,  and  he  had  gone  from 
it  to  his  studies  in  the  Polytechnic,  coming  home  on  the  short  vacations,  and 
leaving  with  his  course  unfinished  at  his  father's  death.  Crucial  time!  When 
his  father's  estate  was  settled — he  never  knew  just  how  it  happened,  but  there 
was  little  or  nothing  left  for  the  family,  and  the  house  belonged  to  the  executor. 

The  executor  was  the  president  of  the  bank  where  Mr.  "Rosillon  had  now 
been  the  cashier  this  twenty  years  and  more.  It  is  true  he  had  given  the  boy 
a  place  in  the  bank  and  had  steadily  pushed  him  forward  till  he  was  cashier. 
But  Mr.  Rosillon  had  always  looked  upon  the  old  house  with  the  feeling  that  it 
was  his  and  not  another's,  and  vaguely  formed  but  deep  the  resolve  had  always 
been  in  his  will  that  some  day  it  should  be  his  indeed. 

And  now  it  was  to  be  sold,  for  the  president  had  stretched  out  his  arms 
like  an  octopus,  grasping  this  and  that  possession,  and  a  palace  had  been  slowly 
rising  on  the  hill,  inclosed  with  marble  walls  and  wrought-iron  grilles,  and  the 
old  house,  still  furnished  save  for  the  modern  additions,  the  old  house  that  was 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  203 

no  longer  equal  to  the  president's  tastes,  was  in  the  hands  of  a  real  estate 
broker,  But  it  was  quite  equal  to  the  taste  of  Mr  Rosillon.  and  he  felt  that  if  he 
failed  to  obtain  possession  of  it  now  he  never  would  obtain  it.  v  Yet  how  was  it 
possible  ?  He  had  not  five  thousand  dollars  in  the  world,  and  the  place  was 
worth  twenty-five  thousand.  It  had  taken  nearly  all  his  income  to  care  for  his 
sick  wife  and  to  keep  his  boy  in  college — his  sister  Sylvia  had  the  girl  in 
Europe,  They  were  coming  home  now,  Harold  and  Angela,  and  he  had  been 
looking  forward  to  it  with  a  boyish  eagerness. .  But  if  it  were  only  up  in  the 
old  Rosillon  house  that  he  were  going  to  receive  them  !  He  was  not  a  man  that 
indulged  in  daydreams  ;  but  sometimes  as  the  smoke  curled  up  from  the  even, 
ing  cigar  he  had  pictured  the  home-coming  of  the  children,  to  him  and  to  their 
mother,  in  that  ancestral  house,  with  a  sort  of  ecstasy. 

He  had  been  up  there  only  to-day  on  an  errand  for  the  president,  and  the 
quaint  old  tapestry,  the  rich,  blue-green  of  the  worn  rugs  and  curtains,  the 
massive  mahoganies,  the  hammered  brass,  the  huge  vases  as  tall  as  he,  all  the 
spacious  and  tarnished  splendor  of  the  rooms,  even  the  disjointed  old  portraits 
that  had  been  banished  to  the  upper  passages,  had  filled  him  with  an  indescrib- 
able sort  of  homesickness,  and  he  had  pictured  the  place  with  the  two  big  Cop- 
leys that  he  had,  restored  to  their  places,  with  the  old  silver  and  china  that  was 
still  his  and  Sylvia's,  with  the  grace  that  his  wife  would  add  to  it,  with  his  beau- 
tiful Angela  roaming  through  it,  with  the  voice  of  his  boy  back  from  college 
ringing  down  the  halls.  And  if  he  could  not  buy  the  house  now  it  was  useless 
to  think  of  it  any  more ;  for  the  Jerseys — people  that  seemed  to  him  even  more 
of  a  desecration  to  have  in  the  house  than  it  had  seemed  to  have  the  president 
there — would  be  its  owners.  Paul  Jersey  had  already  made  an  offer  for  it,  and 
he  had  a  comparative  fortune  at  his  command. 

Mr.'  Rosillon  had  spoken  to  the  president  about  his  wishes  that  day  when 
he  came  down  from  the  old  house 

"Why,  I'd  like  to  help  you  out,  Rosillon,"  said  the  president.  ''lam 
always  glad  to  oblige  you.  But,  upon  my  word,  I  don't  think  it  would  be  a 
friendly  act  on  my  part.  That  house  would  eat  up  your  salary." 

"I  have  been  here  along  time,  Mr.  Thursden.  and  have  given  the  bank 
faithful  service,"1  said  Mr.  Rosillon,  tentatively,  "  and  my  best  years.  Perhaps 
the  directors  might  think  an  increase  of  salary  ^ 

The  president  opened  his  eyes  and  mouth  with  a  strange  wrinkling  resem- 
blance to  a  jack-o'-lantern. 

11  Yes,"  he  said,  as  soon  as  he  had  taken  his  breath,  and  losing  no  time  in 
turning  the  tables.  »»  The  bank  has  given  you  employment  for  a  good  many 
years,  Rosillon,  and  has  let  newer  men  with  newer  methods  go  by.  But  I  don't 
think  its  interest  in  you  will  let  it  do  more  than  that. " 


204  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

"  I  suppose  not,"  said  Mr.  Rosillon,  lowering  his  handsome  head  with  some 
depression  of  manner.  "  But  there  is  the  house  I  live  in  now.  With  that  and 
tbree  or  four  thousand  cash  I  might  arrange  a  mortgage  for  the  balance  that 
would  let  me  take  possession." 

"  Now  look  here,  Rosillon,  what's  the  use  ?  You  know  the  condition  of 
things  as  well  as  the  next  man.  You  know  I'm  in  enterprises  where  I  need 
myself  every  penny  the  bank  can  spare — enterprises  before  which  this  paltry 
affair  of  an  old  house  has  got  to  step  out  of  the  way.  Good  heavens,  man ! 
There's  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  cold  cash,  or  as  good  as,  in  the  safe 
now,  and  it's  only  a  part  of  the  money  I've  got  to  have  to  make  the  '  Pipsis- 
sewa"  go  through.  And  I  don't  know,  I  say,  that  I  would  help  you  buy  that 
house  if  I  could— Jersey  offers  me  twenty  thousand  spot  cash,  for  it5  but  it's 
worth  more ;  there's  a  large  garden  to  cut  up  in  lots.  It  would  only  saddle  you 
with  a  mortgage  worse  than  a  millstone  round  your  neck.  No,  I  advise  you  as 
a  friend  not  to  think  of  it.  It's  a  mere  matter  of  sentiment.  And  you  can't 
let  sentiment  have  anything  to  do  with  business.  That's  my  rule,  and  you  see 
it  has  met  with  some  success.  No,  it  can't  be  done,  it  can't  be  done,"  said  the 
president  affably.  "  And  it  isn't  for  any  want  of  good  will;  you'll  bear  me  out 
in  saying  I've  always  been  ready  with  a  helping  hand,  Rosillon,  and  I'm  doing 
so  now  in  refusing  to  let  you  act  against  your  own  advantage  here. "  And  the 
great  man  rang  the  bell  and  closed  the  interview. 

It  was  very  evident  that  the  president  acted  upon  this  rule.  Mr.  Rosillon 
returned  to  his  .desk  and  added  his  figures,  but  his  thoughts  were  up  in  the 
dark,  blue-green  shadows  of  the  old  Rosillon  drawing-room.  They  came  back 
with  a  shock  -when  he  saw  Paul  Jersey  pass  up  the  place  and  go  into  the  presi- 
dent's room,  and  his  breath  was  hot  between  his  teeth.  He  felt  that  he  could 
never  endure  the  fact  of  Paul  Jersey  in  his  father's  house— the  man  who  had 
married  the  girl  he  loved,  gained  the  position  for  which  he  had  fitted  himself, 
kept  him  out  of  the  land  speculation  he  had  seen  the  first,  who,  indeed,  had  got 
the  better  of  him  in  every  relation  in  life.  To  be  sure,  the  girl  had  proved  but 
a  poor  piece  of  humanity,  and  the  wife  he  married  later  had  been,  for  all  her 
invalidism,  a  fireside  blessing  -,  but  that  did  not  hinder  the  main  proposition. 
-  The  thought  of  Jersey's  getting  that  house  now  was  like  a  cup  of  gall  and  worm- 
wood at  Mr.  Rosillon's  lips.  It  made  him  shiver  with  physical  repulsion. 
Jersey's  wife — the  woman  who  had  broken  faith  with  him — queening  it  at  his 
father's  fireside  !  Jersey's  daughters — the  bold,  apple-cheeked  beauties — in  the 
place  that  belonged  to  his  little  Angela  !  It  could  not,  it  should  not  be  !  And 
then  he  groaned  in  his  helplessness.  And  Angela  might  be  at  home  now  or 
any  day,  and  he  knew  as  well  as  he  knew  his  interest  table  that  it  had  been  as 
much  the  wish  of  his  girl's  heart  as  it  had  been  that  of  his.  And  what  a  van- 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  205 

tage  it  would  have  given  the  boy  to  have  such  a  home  as  that  to  which  to  bring 
his  mates — in  time  he  would  have  helped  his  father  pay  for  it.  And  the 
more  Mr.  Rosillon  thought  of  it  the  bitterer  the  moment  was.  Jersey  came 
out  of  the  office,  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  his  head  a  little  bent  ;  he  spoke  to  a 
man  near  the  door  as  he  went  out — one  of  the  clerks,  and  shook  his  head.  Per- 
haps the  clerk,  who  dabbled  in  outside  things,  was  interested  with  him  in  the 
sale  of  the  garden  lots,  for  Mr.  Rosillon's  ears,  preternaturally  quick,  heard  a 
muttered  oath.  "  And  a  couple  of  hundred  thousand  lying  idle  in  the  safe  !  " 
the  man  said. 

A  half -moment  after  he  had  caught  "these  words,  Mr.  Rosillon  glanced 
about  him,  with  a  sudden,  half-scared  look.  Then,  as  suddenly,  great  drops 
started  out  on  his  forehead.  The  figures  ran  into  a  straight  line.  Everything 
was  black  around  him.  "No,  no,  no,"  then  his  stiff  lips  were  forming  to  say, 
"I  am  an  honest  man!"  And  his  fingers  were  holding  the  pen  like  an  iron 
vise. 

"What's  the  matter,  Rosillon?"  asked  Jersey,  pausing  a  moment  at  his 
window,  "come  out  and  have  something.  The  air  in  this  beastly  place  will 
kill  a  strong  man  at  sight — sight  draft,"  he  said,  and  went  out  with  half  a  laugh, 
half  a  grimace,  as  Rosillon  shook  his  head. 

Slowly  the  color  crept  back  into  Mr.  Rosillon's  face,  till  as  he  bent  it  over 
his  ledger  the  purple  hue  might  have  been  terrifying  had  any  seen  it.  He 
had  a  quick  notion  that  every  one  might  hear  his  heart  beat  like  a  drum,  far 
away,  coming  nearer,  and  bursting  with  shocks  of  sound  upon  the  ear.  He 
sat  there  calmly,  as  if  cut  out  of  stone — stone  that  inclosed  a  chaotic  fire.  At 
length,  however,  he  looked  around  him  again,  to  see  if  any  observed  the  con- 
vulsion of  nature  that  had  been  going  on.  But  everything  was  the  same  as  if 
he  had  not  been  absorbed  into  the  atmosphere  of  another  and  evil  world.  He 
looked  at  the  clock,  and  dipped  his  pen  into  the  ink,  but  he  did  no  more  work 
that  day.  He  sat  on  his  high  stool,  his  eyes  downcast,  but  his  whole  being 
alert  and  sparkling  from  point  to  point  of  the  scheme  that  rose  before  him. 

It  was  so  simple  that  presently  he  laughed.  The  bonds  were  unregistered, 
the  bags  of  gold  were  not  impossibly  heavy,  the  packages  of  bills  were  of  no 
great  dimensions.  Something  like  a  quarter  of  a  million  in  all.  Perfectly  safe. 
Then  he  laughed — he  was  afraid  the  president's  great  deal  would  not  come  off. 
And  why  should  it  come  off  ?  Were  there  no  equities  to  hinder  it?  Was  not 
the  man  rolling  in  money  now?  Was  it  not  unrighteous  for  him  to  go  on  add- 
ing millions  to  his  million?  And,  after  all,  this  little  obstruction  would  be 
merely  a  rock  in  the  river  of  his  success;  the  stream  would  take  a  new  direc- 
tion and  go  on  flowing  over  its  golden  sands. 

Mr.  Rosillon  left  his  desk  as  the  president  came  out  of  the  inner  office. 


2o6  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

"May  I  ask,"  he  said,  "  if  Mr.  Jersey  made  an  acceptable  offer  for  the 

place?" 

"  What  place  ?  Oh,  no,  he  didn't.  Come  now,  Rosillon,  get  that  bee  out 
of  your  bonnet  !  I  don't  know  that  I  would  sell  it  to  you  if  you  came  cash  in 
hand.  You're  too  good  a  fellow  to  be  ruined  by  a  place  that  will  beggar  you 
with  its  expense.  I  shouldn't  want  the  best  man  alive  in  the  bank,  with  your 
opportunities  there,  and  with  such  temptations  as  you  would  be  under  if  you 
owned  that  house.  I  wouldn't  trust  myself  !  " 

Mr.  Rosillon's  eyes  flashed.  "  Do  you  mean  to  say,"  he  exclaimed,  "  that 
after  all  the  years  I  have  served  you  " — 

"  With  unquestionable  integrity.  Yes.  I  only  mean  to  say  that  when  one 
of  the  twelve  apostles  yielded,  no  one,  no  one  can  be  trusted  to  handle  another's 
money  who  is  in  great  need  of  it  himself.  And  that  is  just  what  I  don't  want 
to  expose  you  to. " 

"  You  are  very  good,"  said  Mr.  Rosillon,  his  eyes  on  the  ground.  It  smote 
him  at  that  moment  that  it  was  the  first  time  he  had  ever  been  unable  to  look 
a  man  in  the  face.  He  threw  back  his  head  and  gazed  squarely  at  Mr.  Thurs- 
den. 

"  Why,  what  ails  your  eyes  ?  "  said  Mr.  Thursden.  "  Those  cursed  figures 
will  be  the  ruin  of  all  of  us  yet.  You'll  have  to  have  some  glasses.  You're  not 
looking  at  me.  You  look  as  if  you  saw  a  ghost  behind  me  !  " 

Rosillon  laughed.  "No,"  he  said,  "  it  is  you  that  see  the  ghost.  I  sup- 
pose my  eyes  are  a  little  tired.  I've  been  going  over  the  expert  account  in 
Kane's  case — we  have  the  accounts,  you  know.  No;  I'm  not  afraid  of  the  ghost 
you  have  raised,  Mr.  Thursden.  I  see  my  way  to  keep  up  the  place  if  I  can 
get  it.  And  what  I  want  is  that  you  should  keep  the  matter  open  till  my  sister 
comes  here.  You  know  she  married  a  wealthy  man,  and  ib  a  widow — she  has  had 
my  little  girl  in  Europe  with  her,  and  she  may  be  here  now  on  any  steamer — 
she  likes  surprises.  And  I  think  I  can  make  an  arrangement  with  her  that  will 
be  satisfactory  to  you,  Mr.  Thursden." 

"  Well,  well,  well  ;  I'll  think  about  it,  Rosillon.  I'll  think  about  it.  But 
I  don't  advise  it,  I  don't  advise  it,  you  know." 

The  president  pattered  away  in  his  bi£  overshoes,  and  one  by  one  the  occu- 
pants followed,  and  at  last  Mr.  Rosillon  was  left  alone  at  his  desk,  still  poring 
over  the  expert  accounts. 

The  watchman  came  up  and  lingered. 

"What  is  it,  Murphy  ?"  asked  Mr.  Rosillon,  struck  suddenly  by  the  cir- 
cumstance that  in  his  calculations  he  had  forgotten  Murphy. 

"  It's  the  little  gurl,  sor, "  said  Murphy,  longing  in  his  sore  heart  for  a  word 
of  sympathy.  "  She's  down  with  the  fever." 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  207 

•'Very  ill?" 

"  She  wor  that  bad  when  I  came  away  that  I  misdoubt  me  an'  she'll  be 
there  when  I  come  back,  I  do.  An'  me  wife's  all  broke  up — ye  do  be  havin'  a 
gurl  of  your  own,  Mr.  Rosillon  " 

"Well,  that's  too  bad,  Murphy.  Look  here— I'll  tell  you  what  I'll  do." 
Mr.  Rosillon  paused,  half  frightened.  If  he  had  forgotten  Murphy  in  his  cal- 
culations, here  was  fate  playing  into  his  hands.  '•  Yes,"  he  went  on,  "  I  shall 
have  to  be  here,  I  can't  say  how  late,  with  these  condemned  accounts.  You  go 
home  and  stay  with  the  child  and  be  back  between  one  and  two  to-night — well, 
say  one.  I'll  see  that  it's  all  right."  And  he  ran  his  fingers  down  the  column 
oefore  him  to  escape  the  thanks  that  made  him  feel  as  if  he  had  picked  poor 
Murphy's  pocket. 

It  might  have  been  ten  minutes,  it  might  have  been  an  hour,  before  Mr. 
Rosillon  looked  up  again ;  he  could  not  have  said.  The  lamps  were  not  yet 
lighted  outside.  What  he  had  to  do  must  be  done  now,  for  the  great  plate- 
glass  windows  were  always  left  bare  and  a  gas  jet  burned  all  night,  for  the  bet- 
ter inspection  of  the  place  by  the  street  patrol. 

What  he  had  to  do  did  not  take  him  long.  There  were  some  empty  wooden 
boxes  in  the  basement ;  there  were  two  or  three  wax  candles  that  had  been  used 
in  sealing  documents ;  there  was  a  can  of  kerosene  with  which  the  char-woman 
now  and  then  rubbed  the  woodwork,  and  then  there  was  some  powder  that 
awhile  ago  had  been  confiscated  from  one  of  the  messengers  who  had  meant  to 
celebrate  too  lively  a  holiday.  His  hand  shook,  but  it  answered  for  the  work. 
When  Mr.  Rosillon  had  left  the  bank,  turning  on  the  gas  and  locking  the  door 
behind  him,  he  knew  that  two  fires  were  so  arranged  that  they  would  smoulder 
for  some  hours,  get  headway  and  break  out  only  in  the  dead  middle  of  the 
night,  when  sleep  was  deepest,  and  just  before  Murphy's  return,  and  that  only 
when  so  far  under  way  that  the  work  was  sure  and  the  explosion  was  not  pre- 
mature, a  trail  of  powder  would  explode  the  powder  left  in  the  safe  and  spread 
the  flames  in  new  directions,  destroying  so  much  that  no  one  would  be  a'ble  to 
say  whether  the  rest  had  been  destroyed  or  not.  The  president  would  not  per- 
haps make  his  deal,  but  he  had  made  one  deal  too  many  when  he  had  robbed 
the  Rosillons  of  their  father's  estate;  this  would  be  hardly  more  than  their 
right  and  the  interest  upon  it;  nothing  at  all  more  than  he  would  have  made  if 
he  had  his  own  twenty  years  ago.  Why  should  he  not  take  his  own  ?  It  was 
not  that  Mr.  Rosillon  put  his  thoughts  into  deliberate  words — but  all  this  was 
somehow  in  his  consciousness. 

A  parcel  of  bonds  disposed  about  one's  person,  some  bundles  of  bank  bills 
distributed  here  and  there,  some  small  bags  of  gold  dropped  in  the  capacious 
pockets  of  a  great  coat — it  was  heavy,  to  be  sure  ;  but  wealth  always  carried 


208  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

weight,  he  said  to  himself  rather  grimly,  and  when  Mr.  Rosillon  left  the  bank 
and  went  up  the  street,  whether  it  was  for  a  long  or  a  short  time,  he  was  a 

wealthy  man. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

As  Mr.  Rosillon  drew  near  his  gate  that  evening  he  looked  up  and  saw  the 
little  house  blazing  with  lights  above  the  tops  of  the  spruces.  He  knew  at  once 
what  had  happened.  Angela  had  come  !  And  his  heart  almost  leaped  from 
his  breast.  For  Angela,  this  beautiful  young  girl  who  was  his  own  flesh  and 
blood,  and  whose  sweet  existence  had  been  a  marvel  to  him  ever  since  her  birth, 
was  the  very  darling  of  his  soul,  and  the  one  more  than  any  other  for  whose 
sake  he  had  found  life  worth  living. 

But  in  another  moment  he  saw  how  extremely  uncomfortable  it  would  be 
to  meet  her  with  the  pockets  of  his  great  coat  sagging  in  this  manner,  with  the 
bulging  of  the  hard  packets  of  paper  about  his  breast.  He  opened  the  door 
with  his  latch  key,  as  quietly,  the  thought  flashed  over  him,  as  if  he  had  been  a 
thief,  and  stepped  softly  to  the  little  room  at  the  end  of  the  hall  which  was  called 
his  den,  and  divested  himself  of  his  new  possessions,  not  staying,  however,  to 
put  them  away.  When  the  house  was  still  again  he  would  take  care  of  that. 

Then  he  stepped  into  the  hall  and  slammed  the  front  door,  and  as  he  did 
so  and  although  his  mind  was  full  of  Angela,  the  sight  of  his  father's  portrait 
made  him  think  of  how  well  it  would  look  in  the  old  house — there  was  some- 
thing stern  about  that  face  he  had  not  seen  in  the  light  that  usually  fell  upon 
it.  And  then  in  an  instant  a  silver  cry,  a  glad  ringing  silver  cry  resounded, 
and  Angela  came  flying  down  the  stairs.  Her  boxes  had  not  yet  been  deliv- 
ered, and  she  had  taken  off  her  traveling  dress  and  wore  a  white  wrapper  of 
her  mother's,  and  her  hair  had  fallen,  one  long  curl  of  fair  dead  gold,  upon  her 
shoulder.  Her  face  was  pale  with  excitement,  her  blue  ej7es  blazed  with  joy — 
she  seemed  to  her  father  in  that  instant  like  a  spirit  of  light,  an  angel  of  the 
Grail — but  he  knew  it  was  his  little  daughter,  and  he  held  her  close,  close,  with 
a  sense  of  the  fulness  of  life,  and  with  a  more  breathless  sense  of  the  dearness 
of  this  perfect  being.  She  was  half  laughing,  she  was  half  crying  and  fling- 
ing her  arms  around  him  again  and  again,  unable  at  first  to  speak.  "Oh, 
it  is  so  fine  to  be  where  you  are  again,  dear,  dearest  papa!"  she  cried. 
"You  are  so  good,  you  are  so  strong,  you  are  such  a  comfort!"  And 
she  laid  her  head  on  his  shoulder  and  was  crying  softly,  and  Mr.  Rosillon 
was  crying,  too.  But  to  be  sure  his  nerves  were  a  little  unstrung.  And  then 
Harold  was  towering  behind  her,  and  there  was  more  outcry  and  embracing; 
and  the  mother,  pale  and  thin  as  a  sweet  shadow,  was  coming  down  with  a 
radiant  look  on  her  face;  and  they  all  went  into  the  library,  where  the  firelight 
was  the  only  light,  and  sat  down  to  enjoy  the  rapture  of  being  together  again. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  109 

Angela  with  her  arm  about  her  father's  neck,  Harold  standing  on  the  rug,  tall 
and  straight  as  a  young  pine  tree,  the  mother  on  the  lounge,  breathing  now 
and  then  a  long  sigh  of  happiness. 

"Oh,  I  haven't  seen  anything  so  good  since  I've  been  gone,"  said 
Angela.  "  This  dear  old  room,  the  books,  the  oleander  tree — just  think  of 
its  being  in  bloom  for  me  !  Cathedrals  and  palaces  and  pictures  are  all  very 
well  and  I'm  glad  I've  seen  them.  But  they're  not  to  be  spoken  of  beside  being 
here  and  finding  you  all  alive  and  well,  and  so  dear,  so  dear  ! "  cried  Angela, 
pulling  her  father  down  so  that  she  might  put  the  other  arm  about  her 
mother. 

"  I  say,"  said  Harold,  "  where  do  I  come  in  ? " 

"  You,"  said  Angela,  looking  up  and  laughing,  "  never  went  out.  I  used 
to  pity  the  girls  over  there  who  had  no  brother,  the  strongest  man  in  his  class, 
the  stroke  in  his  boat,  and  just  Ai  in  his  mid-years." 

"  I'll  be  content  with  a  B,"  said  Harold. 

"  When  there  is  an  A !  "  cried  Angela.  "  Why,  if  he  is  going  to  be  content 
with  B  I  shall  have  to  go  to  the  Annex,  just  to  keep  him  up  to  A  !  " 

"Sort  of  a  guardian  angel,"  said  Harold.  "Well,  I  need  one.  Every 
fellow  needs  one." 

"  Now,  Harold,  darling,  you  know  you  can't  be  content  with  anything  less 
than  the  best.  Papa  never  was.  Why,  I  can  remember  papa's  saying,  «  No, 
no,  the  best  is  good  enough  for  me, '  when  he  used  to  carry  you  around  on  his 
shoulder.  How  proud  you  were  of  him,  papa  ! "  She  was  standing  now  on 
the  rug  beside  Harold,  the  fire  behind  her  glowing  rosy  through  the  edges  of 
lier  white  gown.  "  And  now  it  is  his  turn  to  be  proud  of  you.  I  used  to  be 
when  I  saw  other  girls  with  fussy  fathers,  and  tyrannical  fathers,  and  ignorant 
underbred  ones,  and  fathers  who  had  made  money  in  strange  ways.  There  was 
a  girl  I  saw  in  Algiers — she  was  dreadfully  homesick — and  Aunt  Sylvia  said 
lier  father  could  never  come  back  to  this  country.  I  did  pity  her  so  !  And  do 
you  believe,"  continued  Angela,  talkative  with  excitement  and  pleasure,  "  there 
was  a  man — he  seemed  quite  a  gentleman — coming  over  in  the  steamer  with  us, 
and  it  seemed  he  was  in  charge  of  officers — he  was  an  embezzler  or  something 
dreadful ;  perhaps  it  was  forgery — and  they  were  taking  him  home  for  his  trial. 
And  people  said  his  daughter  had  died  of  a  broken  heart  on  account  of  it.  And 
when  I  heard  about  it  I  just  went  into  our  stateroom  and  knelt  down  and 
thanked  God  that  my  dear  father  was  upright  to  the  very  core  of  his  being — the 
very  soul  of  honor.  That  poor  girl,"  said  Angela  wistfully,  still  standing  and 
twisting  the  long  coil  of  hair  about  her  fingers,  "  I  don't  wonder;  I  should  have 
died,  too,  if  I  had  been  in  her  place.  Because,  you  know,  it  must  have  seemed 
to  her  as  if  the  sky  itself  had  fallen — your  father  does  seem  to  be  something 


aio  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

next  to  God.     It  would  be  like  waking  some  morning  to  find  there  wasn't  any 
sun — there  wasn't  any  God." 

"But  suppose,"  said  Mr.  Rosillon,  "that  he  had  never  been  found  out?" 

"Well,  all  the  same  she  would  have  lost  her  father!  O  papa'."  she  ex- 
claimed, "I  do  believe  that  one  reason  I  am  so  happy  is  because  you  are  your- 
self, because  you  are  my  father,  and  I  feel  so  safe !  I  said  to  Aunt  Sylvia  that 
it  seemed  like  selfish  exultation  to  think  that  I  should  never  die  of  a  broken 
heart  with  my  father  the  best,  the  truest,  the  most  noble,  of  the  most  inflexi- 
ble honesty — Why,  papa!"  she  exclaimed,  she  and  Harold  springing  forward 
together.  "What  is  it?  Is  anything  the  matter  ?  You  are  ghastly  " 

"Nothing,  nothing,"  Mr.  Rosillon  managed  to  say,  waving  her  off.  "The 
air  is  a  little  close — and  I  have  been — perhaps — excited — your  coming — your 
panegyric" —  and  he  laughed  uneasily  and  rose  somewhat  blindly  and  reeled 
and  fell  backward  into  his  chair.  For  at  that  moment  the  maid,  bringing  in 
the  lamps  had  turned  them  up,  and  Angela  crying  out  her  joyous  words,  white 
and  tall  in  the  sudden  glow  of  the  light,  seemed  like  some  sweet  but  terrible 
accusing  angel  standing  before  him  lost  in  the  blackness  of  hell. 

Mr.  Rosillon  recovered  himself  in  a  moment  or  two,  but  through  the 
simple  dinner  to  which  they  were  presently  summoned  he  was  like  one  half- 
dazed. 

"  My  dear,"  said  his  wife,  "  you  mustn't  let  the  children's  return  move  you 
so.  You're  not  eating  a  morsel." 

"  He's  wondering  how  under  heaven  he  is  to  clothe  this  angel  he  has  drawn 
down,"  said  Harold.  A  swift  exultation  filled  Mr.  Rosillon  that  this  peerless 
girl  of  his  would  wear  purple  and  fine  linen  the  rest  of  her  days,  and  that  he 
could  give  it  to  her.  "I  suppose  he'll  say,"  added  Harold,  "  that  this  par- 
ticular angel  is  already  clothed  with  righteousness  and  won't  need  a  bank 
account." 

"  Indeed  she  will,"  laughed  Angela.  "  And  what's  more,  she'll  earn  it 
herself  !  She  is  going  to  do  all  sorts  of  good  work,  and  she  wants  honest 
money  for  it,  and  that  won't  be  money  her  father  gives  her  " 

Mr.  Rosillon  started.  Why  not  ?  What  did  she  mean  ?  What  did  she 
know  ?  And  then  he  laughed  at  himself.  Who  could  know  anything  ?  What 
was  there  to  know  ? 

"  For  then  it  would  be  his  gift  while  she  pretended  it  was  hers,"  Angela 

went  on.     "  And  so  you  see" 

'You  lay  great  stress  on  honest  money,"  said  Harold.      "  For  my  part. 
any  money  that  I  can  get  is  honest  money  enough  for  me." 

"  No,  indeed!"  Angela  cried.  "  A  curse  would  go  with  it  if  it  wasn't  hon- 
estly come  by.  I  should  be  afraid  of  it  "— 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  211 

"  Do  you  mean,  Angela,"  said  her  father,  "that  if  I,  for  instance,  gave 
you  money  that  I  had  not  acquired  in  an — an  honorable  manner  "- 

"  What  an  impossible  idea,  papa!  You  of  all  people!  I  can't  even  dream 
of  it" 

"The  governor,"  said  Harold,  "who  is  so  straight  he  bends  back!"- 

"Well,  we  won't  dream  of  it,"  said  Mr.  Rosillon.  "When  is  your  Aunt 
Sylvia  coming?  I  wan't  to  see  her  about  some  business.  And  what  is  this 
delay  with  the  trunks?  Harold  had  better  go  out  and  telegraph  about  them." 
And  so  Mr.  Rosillon  held  himself  together  till  dinner  was  over  and  Angela  had 
brought  him  his  pipe  and  a  light,  and  Harold  having  gone  off  on  his  errand, 
they  sat  around  the  library  hearth  again  till,  the  clock  outside  striking  nine, 
her  mother  carried  off  the  girl  to  her  own  room  for  an  early  rest,  and  left  Mr. 
Rosillon  among  the  falling  shadows.  A  moment  he  stood  up  and  lifted  his 
arms  as  if  he  threw  off  a  burden — a  burden,  some  subtle  consciousness  told 
him,  that  he  was  always  to  feel  in  his  child's  presence.  And  then  he  fell  back 
in  his  armchair  and  lay  there,  so  many  thoughts  whirling  disjointedly  through 
his  mind  that  he  could  seize  none  and  was  practically  in  a  sort  of  stupor. 
Through  the  bewilderment  of  these  thoughts  whirling  with  that  speed  which  is 
so  swift  that  it  seems  motionless,  one  figure  kept  recurring — it  was  that  of  a 
young  man  whose  face  burned  with  shame  for  his  father — it  was  that  of  a 
young  man  who  inherited  the  quality  of  a  thief  and  brought  all  his  splendid 
promise  to  dust.  All  that  then  disappeared  only  to  be  followed  by  another, 
Angela  dead -white  and  still  as  clay,  aad  looking  at  him  with  great  bitter  eyes 
that  searched  his  soul,  and  he  seemed  to  shrivel  before  them  with  a  physical 
agony. 

Through  the  blackness  of  his  mood,  far,  far  away,  fell  the  tone  of  a  bell — 
a  clock  was  striking  ten.  Directly  afterward  a  fire  alarm  sounded,  booming 
close  upon  his  ears,  and  then  he  heard  the  horses  dashing  by,  and  every  hoof 
seemed  to  strike  a  spark  of  fire  inside  his  train. 

The  alarm  was  for  quite  another  portion  of  the  town  ;  he  knew  it  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  bank  ;  but  he  dragged  himself  up  mechanically  to  go  to 
an  upper  window,  as  his  wont  had  been  upon  an  alarm.  But  as  he  reached  the 
foot  of  the  stairs  and  glanced  up,  there  stood  Angela  looking  down  at  him, 
pausing  on  the  way  from  her  mother's  room  to  her  own  ;  and  whether  she  had 
been  saying  her  old  prayers  at  her  mother's  side,  or  whether  it  were  just  the 
whiteness  and  sweetness  of  her  own  spirit,  the  look  on  her  face  appalled  him, 
and  he  turned  suddenly  without  the  good-night  for  which  she  was  waiting, 
plunged  into  his  den,  and  two  minutes  afterward  the  door  had  slammed  behind 
him  and  he  was  running  for  the  bank  as  if  he  were  running  a  race  for  the  prize 
of  his  own  soul. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  213 

It  was  a  mild,  spring  night,  with  an  immense  sky,  through  which  the  wind 
drove  the  clouds,  and  now  and  then  the  moon  ran  out  on  a  long  rift  and  sailed 
away  again  into  cavernous  darkness.  Fragrances  of  blossoming  willows  and 
springing  grass  came  in  long  puffs  in  the  squares  where  the  trees  tossed  on 
high  and  beat  and  swept  the  sward  and  sent  strange  shadows  shifting  acros?  the 
sward.  But  rushing  on  with  a  breathless  haste,  except,  mechanically,  when  he 
chanced  to  meet  anyone,  Mr.  Rosillon  knew  nothing  of  wind  or  weather  save 
for  some  unconscious  formula  that  it  was  an  awful  night  for  a  fire.  Three  or 
four  thoughts  ran  over  and  over  each  other  as  if  his  mind  were  a  treadmill — 
that  he  must  get  there,  there  was  a  train  of  powder  to  be  scattered,  to  be  wet, 
there  were  some  things  to  be  put  back  in  the  safe,  and  there  was  Angela.  Yes, 
yes,  he  must  get  there,  he  must  scatter  that  powder  before  the  fire  reached  it, 
he  must  get  the  things  into  the  safe  and  then  give  the  alarm.  Angela's  father 
was  an  honest  man  !  He  must  never  see  the  look  on  her  face  and  be  afraid  to 
meet  it  !  There  was  to  be  no  shame  and  anguish  for  Angela.  And  he 
quickened  his  steps  till  he  was  almost  running,  and  reached  the  bank  door  just 
as  a  policeman  came  sauntering  up  the  street  on  his  round. 

it  seemed  as  if  he  never  could  drag  out  that  key,  never  could  fit  it  to  the 
lock.  His  heart  was  beating  in  the  tips  of  his  fingers — he  feared  he  was  too 
late,  he  smelled  the  smoke,  he  thought  he  saw  light  through  a  chink  of  the 
basement — oh,  to  get  in  before  that  policeman  caught  sight  of  him  !  He  was  on 
fire  himself  from  head  to  foot.  And  then  the  bolt  turned,  the  door  gave  way, 
a  cloud  of  smoke  poured  out  as  he  dashed  in,  gathering  as  he  went  the  parcels 
that  he  carried.  He  made  three  strides  toward  the  safe,  turned  suddenly  with 
a  blinding  flash  in  his  eyes,  heard  a  report  like  the  crack  of  doom ,  and  fell,  face 
down,  unconscious,  with  the  gold,  the  bonds,  the  bills  beneath  him. 

Murphy,  who  had  been  unwilling  to  impose  on  good  nature,  and  so  had 
hastened  back  before  the  time,  arrived  at  the  moment  the  policeman  came  run- 
ning up,  and  together  they  dragged  Mr.  Rosillon  and  the  packages  he  still 
clutched  in  a  death-grip,  out  of  the  smoke  of  fire  and  ruin,  and  turned  in  the 
alarm. 

**  Oh,  holy  Lord  !"  said  the  policeman,  as  they  put  him  down. 

'  Do  be  looking  at  him  !"  said  Murphy.  "  He's  given  the  life  of  him  to 
save  the  bank  money." 

"  He's  done  that  ! 

"  He's  been  in  it  this  one  and  twenty  year>  an'  it  wor  the  same  to  him  as 
his  own  childer,  more  betoken." 

When  Mr.  Rosillon  again  became  conscious  he  hesitated  to  open  his  eyes — 
his  first  idea  that  he  was  dead,  changing  to  the  assurance  that  without  any 
doubt  he  was  in  prison.  Yet  there  had  been  familiar  sou  ads — and  then  a  quick, 


2I4   .  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

wary  glance  showed  him  his  wife  and  Angela  and  the  accustomed  things  of  his 
own  room.     His  lips  moved,  but  he  could  say  nothing. 

4;  It  is  all  right,  papa,  it  is  all  right!  "  cried  Angela.  "  And,  oh,  we  are  so 
glad  and  thankful ;  we  are  so  proud  of  you,  papa !  " 

This  was  a  new  revelation.  And  as  all  things  come  to  him  that  waits,  Mr. 
Rosillon  waited.  From  time  to  time  in  his  drowsing,  and  as  he  lay  silent,  he 
gathered  that  the  fire  had  been  extinguished  with  but  little  damage  to  the  bank, 
and  that  he  had  done  something  heroic.  He  took  the  drops  and  the  nourish- 
ment that  were  brought  to  him  and  fell  off  again  into  deep  sleep.  He  had,  of 
course,  been  stunned,  and  there  had  been  some  fear  of  concussion  of  the  brain; 
a  doctor  and  a  hospital  nurse  were  busy  about  him  for  a  while,  he  was  vaguely 
aware,  and  then  by  slow  degrees  full  consciousness  came  back  to  him. 

But  he  said  nothing.  He  was  thinking,  thinking,  feebly  at  first,  and  then 
with  all  his  might,  that  if  he  were  really  to  get  out  of  this  clear,  and  all  could 
by  any  possibility  be  as  before,  the  cost  of  the  safe  and  the  expenses  of  the  fire 
could  be  paid  back  to  the  bank  in  small  sums  and  excite  no  suspicion,  and  he 
could  account  for  his  presence  there.  How  could  he  account  for  his  presence 
there  ?  Oh,  yes,  it  had  slipped  his  mind — he  had  let  Murphy  go.  He  ought 
not  to  have  let  Murphy  go.  But  the  child  was  sick.  And  he  had  felt  uneasy 
and  had  gone  back.  That  was  the  truth.  If  it  was  not  the  whole  truth,  if  it 
were  a  lie  masquerading  as  the  truth,  he  would  have  to  live  under  the  shadow 
of  so  much  of  it  as  was  a  lie  all  his  life.  That  would  have  to  be  his  punish- 
ment. It  seemed  to  him  that  it  would  be  an  unspeakable  relief  if  he  could 
believe  that  for  that  little  while  he  had  been  mad. 

Mr.  Rosillon  was  past  all  danger,  lying  back  among  his  pillows,  pale  and 
weak,  and  with  hardly  any  hold  on  life  ;  it  seemed  as  if,  indeed,  it  were  some- 
thing loathsome  that  he  dreaded  to  take  up  again,  when  Mr.  Thursden  came 
in.  Angela  opened  the  door  to  him,  standing  up  straight  and  tall  like  a  young 
silver  birch,  in  her  pale  green  gown,  her  face  rippling  with  sunshine  and  joy. 

"  Well,  Rosillon,"  said  Mr.  Thursden,  "  glad  to  get  you  back,  by  all  that's 
good!  We  thought  we  were  going  to  lose  you  one  time." 

"Mr.  Thursden,"  said  Rosillon,  his  great  hollow  eyes  dark  with  shadows, 
as  the  president's  big,  warm  hand  closed  around  his  feeble  fingers,  "  I  have 
been  down  to  the  gates  of  hell  ! " 

"  I  should  have  been  down  there  if  it  hadn't  been  for  you,  you  mean  !  I 
swear,  Rosillon,  I  haven't  any  words  to  express  my  sense  of  what  you  did. 
never  heard,  I  never  dreamed  of  such  devotion  to  duty  as  that  !  Why,  it's 
superhuman,  such  courage!  Going  to  the  safe  and  getting  out  the  valuables 
for  us  in  the  face  of  that  fire  and  that  explosion.  I  wouldn't  have  done  it  for 
all  the  gold  in  Christendom,  or  the  whole  plant  of  '  Pipsissewa.'  And  I  tell  you 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


215 


the  directors  feel  just  as  I  do  about  it.  And  we've  had  a  meeting  and  cast 
about  in  some  way  to  show  our  appreciation  for  your  act,  and  we  have  decided — 
I  confess  the  proposition  was  mine,  knowing  your  wish — that  the  old  Rosillon 
house  shall  be  a  testimonial  of  our  gratitude.  And  it  won't  tell  the  half  of  it. 
Where  the  deuce  is  my  handkerchief  ?  And  now,  shall  we  have  the  deeds  made 
out  in  your  name  or  in  the  name  of  your  wife  ?  "  And  the  president,  whose 
voice  a  moment  before  had  been  trembling  quite  humanly,  began  to  swell 
visibly  with  his  magnanimity. 

"  Mr.  Thursden,"  said  the  other,  "  if  you  think  I  have  done  my  duty"; — 
"Oh,  duty  !     Duty  carried  to  the  highest  point  !     Duty"- 
"  Then  I  can  take  no  other  reward.       I  want  no  reward  for  doing  my 
duty." 

"  But,  Rosillon,  my  good  fellow  "— 

"No,  no.  I  have  been  doing  some  thinking  while  lying  here.  I  have 
turned  over  what  you  said — it  seems  a  year,  a  lifetime  ago — that  the  house 
would  be  a  millstone  around  my  neck.  I  don't  want  it.  I  can't  take  it.  I  am 
sensible  of  your  goodness,  of  the  generosity  of  the  directors,  but  it  must  end 

here  .     I  will  go  back  to  the  bank  when  I  am  able  if  you  will  allow  me  " 

"Allow  you  !" 

"  And  all  shall  be  as  before.     But  no  reward,  Mr.  Thursden." 
"  I  see,  I  see.     By  George,  Rosillon,  you're  the  noblest  fellow — no,  you're 
the  most  foolish,  the  most  quixotic  I  ever  met.      Just  think  twice  about  the 

house.     Why,  if  you  don't  want  to  keep  it  you  can  sell  it  " 

"  Sell  that  house  !  No— I— I  mean  let  Jersey  have  it,  if  he  wants.  I  will 
stay  here.  This  house  where  my  wife  and  I  set  out  the  trees  and  planted  the 
garden,  where  my  children  were  born,  where  I  have  come  up  out  of  hell  to  find 
— not  deserving  it — this  angel  waiting  for  me,"  the  gloomy  eyes  resting  on 
Angela,  the  lips  breaking  into  a  smile,  "  this  shall  be  the  Rosillon  house,  and 
I  will  have  no  other." 


2l6  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


CHAPTER  NINTH. 


In  a  Dangerous  Place. 

Thou  treadst  upon  enchanted  ground, 
Perils  and  snares  beset  thee  round. 

— Anon. 

Eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  liberty. 

— Adapted  from  Cur  ran. 

O  Rose,  thou  art  sick! 

The  invisible  worm 
That  flies  in  the  night, 

In  the  howling  storm, 
Has  found  out  thy  bed 

Of  crimson  joy, 
And  his  dark  secret  love 

Does  thy  life  destroy. 

—  William  Slake. 

If  the  germs  gave  the  fever,  why  didn't  they  have  the  fever?     How   could   they  give  a 
thing  they  didn't  have? — A  Child's  Story. 

The  river  Rhine,  it  is  well  known, 
Doth  wash  your  city  of  Cologne, 
But  tell  me,  nymphs,  what  power  divine 
Shall  henceforth  wash  the  river  Rhine? 

— Coleridge. 

Better  to  hunt  in  fields  for  health  unbought 
Than  fee  the  doctor  for  a  nauseous  draught. 

— Dryden. 

Health  is  the  second  blessing  that  we  mortals  are  capable  of — a  blessing  that  money 
cannot  buy. — Izaak    Walton. 

The  Health  of  the  Home. 

In  obtaining  this  house  which  is  to  be  so  dear  a  shelter,  be  it  on  the  as- 
phalt or  under  the  green  bough,  we  have  of  course  been  particular  about  the 
site,  for  it  may  be  "writ  large  but  the  country  is  healthful  only  when  it  is 
healthful,"  and  this  sanitary  condition  is  not  to  be  taken  for  granted.  Rose- 
bushes in  the  door-yard  in  too  frequent  cases  supersede  drain-tiles  under  it, 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


217 


and  the  cupola  too  rarely 
holds  a  ventilating  shaft.  In 
the  city  there  are  many 
houses  that  are  built  over  old 
water  courses,  and  the  would- 
be  occupant  is  wise  when  he 
procures  an  old  map  of  the 
city,  which  will  let  him 
know  whether  or  not  he  is 
subject  to  this 
danger. 

It  is  the  houses 
built  over  these 
old  choked  or 
diverted  water 
courses,  whose 
occupants  are  the 
sufferers  from 
malaria.  In  the 
country  house 
the  chief  risks  to 
health  come  from 
the  pollution  of 
the  water  sup- 
ply, and  of  the 
air,  by  contact 
with  waste  mat- 
ter. Owners  of 
property  are  left 
to  build  or  not  to 
build  their  drains 
and  to  bestow 
them  perhaps  as 

ignorance  and  indolence  prompts,  with  no  official  supervision,  and  the  consc 
quence  is,  that  sometimes  the  loveliest  spots  are  nests  of  low  fever,  diphtheria 
and  dysentery. 

Rock  and  Gravel. 

In  choosing  the  location  of  the  country  house,  it  is  to  be  supposed  that 
we  have  given  preference  to  a  region  of  gravelly  or  sandy  soil,  or  where  we 


UNABLE    TO    LOOK    A    MAN    IN    THE    FACE. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

could  have  founded  it  on  a  rock,  clay  soils  holding  the  surface  water  too  long, 
and  making  the  air  damp  and  chilly. 

Wherever  the  waste  could  contaminate  drinking  water  with  putrefying 
organic  matter,  we  shall  have  found  it  the  safer  way  to  substitute  rain-water 
for  cooking  and  drinking  purposes.  If  the  roof  and  gutters  are  kept  clean, 
and  the  rain  water  collected  and  stored  in  cisterns,  and  then  filtered,  all  which 
can  be  easily  done,  the  supply  will  be  sufficient,  and  perfectly  healthful.  It 
is,  however,  wiser  to  boil  it  for  drinking,  then  cool,  and  afterward  aerate  it. 
If  filters  are  used  for  purification,  they  must  be  taken  apart  and  the  strainers 
carefully  washed  and  dried  at  least  once  a  fortnight.  Otherwise  they  become 
useless,  the  sand  and  charcoal  retaining  organic  impurities,  and  imparting  a 
disagreeable  taste  to  the  water. 

No  kitchen  slops,  either  from  wash-tubs  or  dish-pan,  must  be  thrown 
upon  the  ground,  or  into  that  open  drain  too  often  found  at  the  back  of  the 
usual  country  dwelling.  Organic  waste  festers  in  the  hot  sun,  and  the  satu- 
rated ground  gives  forth  incense  fit  for  Beelzebub,  god  of  flies.  All  house- 
hold waste  should  be  removed  as  fast  as  it  gathers,  and  lightly  buried.  In 
the  dark  laboratory  of  the  earth  noxious  matter  is  turned  at  once  to  sweet  and 
wholesome  uses.  Lawn  and  garden  thrive  on  what  is  fatal  to  man.  But  if 
this  can  not  be  done,  then  the  kitchen  waste  should  be  burned  two  or  three 
times  a  day.  No  standing  pails  of  garbage  should  be  allowed  to  tempt  flies 
and  defile  the  fragrant  air. 


The  Cellar. 

The  condition  of  the  cellar  is  far  more  important  than  that  of  the  parlor. 
In  light  rooms  dirt  is  comparatively  harmless.  In  dark  places  it  is  a  lurking 
-danger.  No  old  wood,  no  vegetables,  no  rubbish  of  any  kind,  should  be 
allowed  to  cumber  the  cellar,  which  should  have  a  water-proof  and  air-tight 
floor,  to  prevent  ground  air  and  soil  moisture  from  rising  to  the  living-rooms. 
Whether  the  floor  and  walls  be  cemented  or  not,  it  is  necessary  that  all  cellar 
doors  and  windows  should  be  daily  opened  for  free  circulation  of  air. 

The  water  from  the  eaves,  if  not  saved  in  a  cistern,  should  be  carried 
so  far  from  the  house  in  well-laid  pipes  that  there  will  be  no  contiguous  sur- 
face dampness  or  wet  foundation  walls.  Dampness  is  a  ready  vehicle  for 
disease,  as  well  as  a  fruitful  cause  of  it.  Another  source  of  danger  is  decay- 
ing vegetable  refuse  in  garden  or  grounds.  Careless  servants  leave  rhubarb 
leaves,  prunings  of  vines,  or  weeds  wherever  they  fall,  instead  of  taking  them 
to  the  compost  pit  or  burning  them.  If  they  are  out  of  sight  they  are  out  of 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  219 

mind,  till  they  recall  themselves  in  visitations  of  headaches,  aching  bones,  or 
irritable  tempers. 

In  short,  eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  liberty  from  disease,  as  from 
other  usurpers.  Voltaire  said  that  incantations  would  destroy  a  flock  of  sheep 
—{/administered  with  the  proper  quantity  of  arsenic.  But  if  we  put  a  super- 
stitious faith  in  country  air,  to  the  neglect  of  constant  scrutiny  and  intelli- 
gent precaution,  it  is  likely  that  our  last  state  will  be  worse  than  our  first. 
It  is  when  the  early  autumn  weather  sets  in,  bringing  cool  nights,  treading 
close  upon  the  heel  of  hot  days,  that  the  demon  of  fever  and  infection  is  most 
apt  to  walk  abroad,  and  our  house-holders  will  find  there  is  no  time  so  good  as 
the  later  autumn  weather,  just  as  the  black  frost  falls,  for  exorcising  the  be- 
ing that  makes  such  destruction.  Then,  in  the  safe  chilliness  of  the  nights 
and  days  the  places  that  he  has  haunted  can  be  barricaded  against  his  return, 
and  the  nests  in  which  his  evil  attendance  has  brooded  can  be  cleared  of  their 
presence  for  once  and  all. 


The  Prevention  that  Is  Better  than  Cure. 

It  is  when  pickling  and  preserving  and  house-cleaning  are  over  that  the 
good  house-wife  will  turn  her  attention  to  these  affairs,  more  vital  by  far  than 
anything  that  conduces  merely  to  the  pleasure  of  the  eye,  or  of  the  table,  and 
will  look  about  her  to  see  if  her  drains  and  sinks,  her  well  and  water-pipes, 
are  in  good  order,  and  if  her  cellar  is  what  a  cellar  should  be,  underlying  as 
it  does,  the  whole  life  of  the  house,  and  capable  of  sending,  from  its  position 
in  the  sub-structure,  bane  or  blessing,  pure  air  or  fetid,  through  every  crevice 
of  the  dwelling.  And  there  is  no  circumstance,  by-the-way,  that  points  more 
plainly  to  the  wisdom  of  making  every  exertion  to  own  one's  home,  of  fore- 
going luxury  and  display  and  all  other  gratification  that  can  be  foregone  with 
safety  to  soul  and  body,  and  laying  away  the  wherewithal  to  purchase  the 
place  with  which  one  can  do  as  one  chooses,  and,  uprooting  what  is  already 
wrong,  plant  wells  and  dig  drains  where  it  is  best:  wisdom,  since  although  the 
expenditure  of  the  same  money  in  choice  food,  in  fine  raiment,  or  in  costly 
equipage  may  be  even  more  delightful,  there  are  no  delights  that  are  equal 
to  those  of  health,  and  health  can  only  be  permanently  secured  when  we  are 
masters  of  our  own  situation.  If  the  drain  that  receives  the  outflow  of  the 
house  be  connected  with  the  refrigerator  or  too  near  the  well,  or  if  the  con- 
duits from  the  sink,  apt  to  be  made  of  wood,  and  frequently  leaking  on  the 
way,  are  equally  near,  there  is  no  human  power  that  can  bar  out  the  infectious 
fever  from  that  house  except  the  removal  of  the  drains  and  conduits  to  a  safe 


220 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


distance;  for,  inappreciably  to 
taste  or  scent,  atom  by  atom, 
drop  by  drop,  the  well  is  poison- 
ed, the  milk  in  the  refrigerator  is 
poisoned,  and  life  is  surer  and 
better  underneath  the  dew  of  the 
upas-tree. 

But  the  position  of  these  things 
it  is  not  always  in  the  housewife's 
power  to  determine,  and  she  must 
make  the  best  of  things  as  they 
are,  and  the  best  is  to  have  them 
cleansed  yearly  in  •  the  frosty 
weather,  when  the  evil  germs  set 
free  at  their  opening  perish  of  the 
withering  chill  before  they  can 
reach  the  stomachs  and  lungs  of 
the  inmates  of  the  house. 

A  thorough  cleansing  of  these 
spots  every  fall  is  not  so  expen- 
sive as  a  course  of  doctor's  visits, 
and  does  not  mount  up  like  the 
druggist's  bill;  and  if  it  is  disa- 
greeable, it  is  one  of  the  prices  we 
must  pay  for  enjoyment  of  com- 
fort and  health,  remembering  that 

there  is  no  such  thing  as  immunity  from  the  trouble  of  this  oversight  while 
in  a  state  of  civilization ;  that  this  oversight,  in  fact,  is  the  groundwork  of 
civilization,  and  that  in  matters  of  sickness  and  suffering,  as  in  matters  of 
politics,  the  old  adage  holds  equally  true,  that  "  eternal  vigilance  is  the  price 
of  liberty." 

But  if  it  is  ruinous  to  poison  the  water  of  the  well  from  which  we  drink, 
it  is  quite  as  ruinous  to  poison  the  air  which  we  breathe,  and  that  is  the  part 
in  the  house  which  the  neglected  cellar  has  it  in  its  power  to  play.  Wherever 
vegetables  have  been  stored,  there  some  have  run  over  the  bins  and  been 
trodden  on  the  floor,  or  have  run  into  the  dark  corners  of  the  bins  and  been 
overlooked,  till  they  have  decayed  and  transmitted  their  decay  to  others; 
there  has  been  a  "sup  of  milk"  spilled  on  the  floor,  a  bit  of  butter,  a  few 
drops  of  the  drippings,  some  greasy  brine  from  the  barrel,  some  festering 
stuff  from  a  broken  bottle ;  there  is  a  bit  of  mould  here,  a  fungus  there — in 


REELED  AND  FELL  BACKWARD. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  221 

short,  the  witches'  caldron  is  as  ready  as  when  the  witches  danced  round  it  on 
the  heath  of  Forres,  and  threw  into  it  their  horrid  ingredients.  Let  now  a 
wet  season  arrive  upon  this  condition  of  things,  let  a  hot  and  humid  August 
come,  or  let  a  January  thaw  of  snow  and  slush  set  in,  let  some  water  trickle 
into  the  cellar,  or  let  the  stones  of  the  wall  merely  absorb  the  dampness  and 
suffer  it  to  ooze  through  there,  and  the  putrid  air  that  steals  up  through  the 
studding  of  the  walls,  behind  every  partition,  up  beside  every  chimney,  and 
through  every  door  and  every  crack,  brings  disease  stalking  in  with  the 
death's-head  behind  it,  only  to  go  out  of  the  door  feet  foremost. 


The  Only  Curse  on  the  House. 

"There's  a  curse  on  the  house,  sure,"  said  an  old  servant  once.  "The 
children  all  die  as  sune's  they're  born.  The  first  of  'em  went  with  the  dysen- 
tery; then  Miss  Ellie,  the  darlint,  follows,  with — what's  this  ye're  afther 
callin'  it? — the  dipthairy;  the  twins  have  gone,  too,  with  the  scarlet  faver; 
and  there's  the  master  down  himself  now  with  the  typhus. " 

"Perhaps  the  fault  is  in  the  house,"  we  suggested. 

"Dadeabitof  it,  thin!"  cried  the  faithful  woman.  "Wasn't  it  claned 
in  the  spring,  and,  as  ye  may  say,  scraped?  And  wasn't  there  bushels  of  the 
wet  dirt,  such  as  you  niver  see,  carried  out  of  the  cellar  and  spread  over  the 
garden,  till  the  -;orn  was  that  splendid  the  one  ear  was  big  enough  for  two?" 

There  surely  was  a  curse  on  that  house — the  curse  of  carelessness,  un- 
cleanness,  and  unthrift;  and  the  hands  that  would  have  been  thrust  into  fire 
for  those  dead  children  had  dealt  them  their  death-blows. 

Throughout  the  world's  history  everywhere  this  subject  of  pure  air  in 
the  dwelling  has  received  the  attention  of  the  thoughtful,  and  been  laughed 
at  by  the  ignorant.  Certain  of  the  ancients  had  a  fancy  that  various  plants  of 
pungent  odor  prevented  infection,  and  they  set  them  in  the  way  and  about 
their  homes — a  practice  at  which  while  we  of  to-day  smile,  the  camphor  bag 
is  carried  in  our  pockets  whenever  small-pox  or  cholera  prevails.  When  the 
plague  raged  in  Italy,  all  the  people  who  were  able  left  Rome  and  flocked  into 
a  little  town  round  which  the  laurel  grew  in  luxuriance.  We  imagine  there 
could  have  been  nothing  in  it,  or  else  the  growth  of  the  laurel  would  have 
been  fostered  round  that  Italian  city  into  which  some  friends  of  ours  once 
strolled  and  found  the  stone  and  sculptured  houses,  the  deep-rutted  paved 
streets,  the  churches  and  market-place  and  stalls,  all  intact  but  overgrown, 
and  forsaken  by  every  living  soul.  The  fever  had  been  there  before  them, 
and  had  desolated  it. 


222 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


Yet     physicians     have 
thought    that  a    fearful 
cholera  season  was  caused 
by   an    absence    of    ozone 
from  the  atmosphere,  that 
bracing   and    life-giving 
principle  which  we  seek  at 
the  sea-side,  and  which  is 
largely  generated  by  elec- 
trical and  phosphoric  agen- 
cies.   And  as  many  plants — 
notably,  it  is  said,  various 
laurels,  lavender,  hyacinth, 
mignonette,    and    the    ber- 
gamot      orange  —  evolve 
ozone   in   the  oxidation  of 
their  aromas,  and  as  in  our 
own     day    the    eucalyptus 
feas  been  found  to  be    of 
such  immense  value  in  ma- 
larial regions  in  absorbing 
and  converting  the  poison, 
it  would  seem  as  if  there 
were  some  spark  of  reason 
in  the  idea  of  the  ancients 
just  mentioned,    and    that 
they  did  not  plant  the  most 
aromatic  flowers  and  offer 
the  richest  balsams  on  the 
altar  of  the  pestilence   for 
nothing. 

But  this  is  at  best  somewhat  fanciful  and  experimental,  and  at  any  rate 
none  of  us  can  rely  on  such  uncertain  aid  in  securing  the  safety  of  our  daily 
and  nightly  breathing  should  we  try  it.  Let  us  plant  as  many  odorous  flowers 
as  we  will  about  our  dwellings,  it  will  be  none  the  less  necessary  for  us  to 
purge  those  dwellings  of  all  accumulated  foulness  whenever  the  season  arrives 
in  which  it  can  be  done  with  safety  to  ourselves  and  others,  and  whitewash 
our  cellar  walls  and  sprinkle  their  floors,  and  all  other  equally  dangerous  spots 
with  copperas,  or  with  that  guardian  of  domestic  life,  the  ill-smelling  but 
beneficent  chloride  of  lime.  Only  by  such  provision  can  we  hear  the  dread- 


LOOKING  DOWN  AT  HIM. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  223; 

ful  names  of  the  autumnal  diseases  without  a  shudder,  and  only  when  we  have 
exercised  it  have  we  a  right  to  consider  the  load  of  responsibility  lifted  from 
our  shoulders. 


We  or  Providence  to  Blame  ? 

When  we  read  of  great  natural  calamities,  the  floods,  the  freezings,, 
the  fires,  or  of  the  great  unnatural  ones,  the  murders,  and  wars,  and 
famines,  we  class  them  under  the  head  of  Acts  of  Providence,  forgetful 
that  almost  every  one  of  them  is  within  our  own  control.  We  read  that  a  dis- 
tant city  is  little  better  than  one  great  pest-house  with  the  small-pox ;  that 
diphtheria  is  seen  to  be  moving — by  the  reports  that  come  into  the  physicians' 
offices,  and  are  jotted  again  on  the  map — with  the  slow  but  sure  tread  of  an 
army  on  a  march,  through  the  midland  country ;  that  the  scarlet  fever  is  ram- 
pant like  a  terrible  fiend  in  the  North.  The  only  one  of  these  things  that  we 
make  any  positive  preparation  for  is  the  small-pox ;  we  secure  ourselves  from 
it,  as  far  as  *nay  be,  before  it  comes,  by  vaccination,  and  society  puts  us  in 
quarantine  if  it  should  reach  us,  and  demands  fumigation  and  disinfection 
when  it  has  left  us.  For  the  others,  they  always  seem  less  tangible  and  possi- 
ble ;  they  are  far  off,  and  they  may  not  affect  us ;  we  seldom  dream  of  any 
preparation  to  hinder  their  fell  visits,  and  society  laughs  at  the  idea  of  extra 
precaution  to  prevent  the  diseases  from  spreading,  or  of  much  attempt  at 
purification  after  they  have  passed  and  left  us  for  fresh  prey.  So  much  is 
this  the  case  that  we  have  even  known  patients  in  diphtheria  to  be  incensed 
at  not  receiving  the  kisses  customary  in  health;  have  seen  fine  ladies  making 
calls  in  a  house  where  two  or  three  children  were  down  with  scarlet  fever, 
quite  careless  as  to  whether  their  next  call  was  to  be  made  in  one  where  the 
children  had  not  yet  received  the  dark  guest;  and  have  met  with  the  servants 
of  a  house  as  yet  safe  chatting  cozily  in  the  kitchen  with  the  servants  of  the 
house  where  the  nursery  was  a  hospital  of  contagion;  and  this  when  that  es- 
pecial disease  is  the  most  dreadful  in  all  the  known  category  of  diseases ;  both 
at  its  height  and  in  its  results,  and  when  the  germs  of  its  contagion  live  for 
weeks,  and  are  so  subtile  and  powerful  that  they  have  even  been  carried  hun- 
dreds of  miles  in  a  letter. 

We  fear  the  small-pox,  it  would  appear,  chiefly  because  it  robs  us  of  what 
beauty  or  comeliness  we  may  possess;  because  it  isolates  us  from  neighbors 
and  condemns  us  to  some  weeks  of  solitude;  because  it  occasions  so  much 
more  fuss  and  inconvenience  in  the  house  than  most  forms  of  illness  do. 
It  can  hardly  be  anything  else  that  moves  us  particularly  in  regard  to  it, 
since  it  is  not  more  loathsome,  not  more  painful,  seldom  if  ever  more  deadly, 


224 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


HE  REMEMBERED  THE  PLACE. 

than  the  other  diseases  named.  To  be  sure,  these  other  diseases  are  the  par- 
ticular foes  of  children,  while  the  former  attacks  ourselves  as  well,  and  so 
brings  a  more  selfish  element  into  play  when  we  are  people  who  have  no 
children ;  but  when  we  are  people  who  have  children,  there  is  no  suffering  we 
would  not  take  upon  ourselves  rather  than  have  scarlet  fever  and  diphtheria 
come  where  our  children  are.  But  every  physician  will  assure  you  that  he 
prefers  to  deal  with  the  small-pox  rather  than  with  the  others,  for  that  has  a 
plain  and  open  course,  and  he  always  knows  where  to  find  it  day  by  day;  but 
the  fiend  of  its  kindred  fever  burrows  in  the  dark,  and  sometimes  under- 
mines the  whole  foundations  of  life  before  its  deadly  presence  is  suspected. 
When  there  shall  be  abroad  among  all  people,  as  there  is  now  among  intelli- 
gent and  well-informed  people,  the  same  wholesome  horror  of  scarlet  fever 
and  diphtheria  that  there  is  of  small-pox  and  of  leprosy  and  of  typhus,  the 
world  will  begin  to  make  some  headway  in  the  effort  to  be  rid  of  these  cruel 
desolators. 

Children's  Diseases. 

We  all  love  our  children  as  we  love  ourselves;  it  is,  in  fact,  an  instinct 
rather  than  a  virtue ;  and  we  would  protect  them  at  the  sacrifice  of  our  own. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  225 

lives.  But  let  there  be  an  epidemic  of  this  nature  in  the  town  where  we  live, 
and,  heroic  as  our  will  may  be,  with  what  discretion  do  we  exercise  it?  In 
the  first  place,  we  shut  the  babies  up  from  the  free  air  lest  a  whiff  of  the  sick- 
ness should  enter  at  the  window  or  door,  and  so  we  force  them  to  breathe, 
to  large  extent,  a  vitiated  atmosphere  that  makes  them  the  easier  prey  if  at- 
tacked. Then  we  allow  them  to  play  with  the  cats  and  the  long-haired  dogs 
which  have  access  everywhere,  running  up  everybody's  back-yard  at  all 
hours,  and  prevented  by  nothing  known  from  carrying  the  contagion  of  any 
disease  in  their  convenient  coats.  In  the  mean  time,  if  a  stranger  comes  to 
the  house,  ignorant  though  we  may  be  of  what  he  is  and  where  he  came  from, 
we  never  think  of  such  a  thing  as  hindering  him  from  petting  the  children  if 
he  pleases.  We  keep  no  disinfectant  in  constant  use  after  we  know  the  epi- 
demic exists ;  and  finally,  we  let  the  children  have  as  much  as  they  wish  of 
the  companionship  of  the  maids,  who,  by  reason  of  their  crowded  church- 
going,  are  so  very  likely  to  gather  the  contagion  in  their  garments. 

Look  a  moment  at  that  last  statement.  Disease  finds  its  favorite  food  in 
the  region  of  poverty,  bad  air,  narrow  quarters,  and  in  the  unhealthy  blood 
made  by  poor  and  insufficient  diet.  It  is  universally  acknowledged  that  such 
spots  are  the  hot-bed  and  propagating  ground  of  everything  of  the  sort. 
The  unfortunate  people  whom  the  disease  thus  victimizes,  frequently  going 
through  the  trial  without  a  physician,  knowing  nothing  of  fumigation  or  dis- 
infection, and  laughing  to  scorn  what  they  happen  to  hear  of  it,  seldom  deny- 
ing themselves  the  pleasure  of  free  going  and  coming,  can  not  but  be  the 
means  of  sadly  spreading  the  evil  from  which  they  suffer.  If  there  are  half  a 
dozen  families  in  a  house,  as  not  unfrequently  happens,  and  the  sickness  be 
in  one  of  those  families,  none  of  the  well  members  of  that  family  would  think 
of  staying  at  home  from  church,  and  of  course  none  of  the  members  of  the 
other  five  families  who  do  not  feel  themselves  to  be  affected;  and  what  is 
there,  then,  to  prohibit  them  from  taking  out  with  them  and  scattering 
through  the  congregation  the  germs  of  the  disease,  and  the  maid  from  inno- 
cently and  ignorantly  bringing  them  home  in  her  shawl  to  the  ruin  of  the 
child  whom  she  also  loves  in  common  with  the  rest  of  the  house,  and  whom 
she  would  do  her  utmost  to  save  ?  It  seems  then  as  if  it  were  not  at  all  too 
much  to  say  that  it  is  no  act  of  Providence  by  which  we  are  smitten  when 
such  disease  invades  us,  but  only  our  own  neglect  and  that  of  others. 


Disinfectants. 

It  would  be  a  simple  and  easy  thing  to  keep  a  dish  of  carbolic  acid  or 
other  better  disinfectant,  exhaling  in  the  house  in  order  to  kill,  or  to  •  make 


226  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

(the  effort  to  kill,  and,  at  all  events,  weaken,  any  of  the  poisonous  germs  that 
might  effect  an  entrance  on  the  air;  to  dissolve  a  little  chloride  of  lime;  to 
"burn  a  pinch  of  coffee  every  now  and  then,  or  some  sugar  or  vinegar:  if  it  is 
disagreeable,  it  is  safe;  and  no  one  can  positively  assert  what  prevention  it 
might  not  prove  to  far  worse  trouble  than  a  slightly  offensive  odor  ever  is. 
We  are  told  that  it  was  given  to  man  to  "reduce  the  earth."  When  in  some 
distant  era  that  shall  be  effectually  done,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  germs  of 
many  of  these  terrors  will  have  no  breeding-place  left  there.  But  till  then  it 
is  our  duty  to  assist  in  the  great  work ;  and  we  venture  to  believe  that  if  every 
house  where  such  contagious  and  heart-breaking  disease  is  found  were  to  be 
quarantined  by  the  yellow  flag  as  small-pox  is,  and  if  it  were  fumigated  with 
sulphur  smoke,  purified  with  atomized  disinfectants  during  the  reign  and  on 
the  disappearance  of  the  trouble,  the  ravages  of  the  malignant  monster,  deso- 
lating households  as  it  goes,  would  be  largely  checked,  if  the  monster  itself 
were  not  thus  finally  destroyed  from  the  face  of  the  earth. 


The  Scarlet  Fever. 

We  can  need  all  these  precautions  for  nothing  so  much  as  for  the  scarlet  fever, 
which,  although  like  death  it  has  all  seasons  for  its  own,  nevertheless  seems 
always  to  rage  with  more  vehemence  when  the  mercury  gets  down  among  the 
small  figures. 

Unlike  their  habit  when  the  measles  are  in  question,  which  many  mothers 
think  it  desirable  for  their  children  to  have  early,  there  is  almost  no  pains 
which  wise  mothers  will  not  take  to  avert  from  their  children  this  evil  of  scarlet 
fever,  than  which  no  other  disease  is  so  much  to  be  dreaded.  And  it  is  justly 
that  this  dread  is  felt ;  for  the  scarlet  fever,  even  if  the  little  patient  escapes 
with  life,  is  likely  to  poison  the  blood,  to  injure  the  brain,  to  destroy  the 
hearing,  or  to  affect  to  deadly  purpose  some  vital  organ  with  long  and  slow 
and  painful  decay.  Poe's  terrible  story  of  the  Masque  of  the  Red  Death  had 
in  it  some  elements  of  the  horror  that  belongs  to  this  pestilence  that  walketh 
,by  noonday — and  I  have  known  an  aged  physician  who  never  could  speak  of 
(this  especial  form  of  fever  without  tears  springing  to  his  eyes,  so  much  misery 
to  child  and  parent  and  household  had  he  seen  it  bring  about. 

When  we  see  a  disease  which,  even  on  recovery,  drags  after  it  in  most 
instances  long  sequelae  of  other  ailments,  often  veiled  and  obscure  and  not 
easy  to  reach  and  treat — kidney  affections,  lung  troubles,  glandular  difficul- 
ties, idiocy,  and  the  rest — we  can  judge  of  the  virulence  of  the  original  thing 
itself.  And  if  by  any  chance  we  see  the  child  itself  enduring  the  first  dis- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  227 

tress,  the  final  agony,  crying  out  in  blind  wonder  at  its  own  suffering,  yield 
ing  up  its  brief  life  perhaps  in  delirium,  perhaps  in  faintness,  with  the  pangs 
of  suspense  and  despair  of  the  mother  bending  over  it,  and  the  desolation  of 
the  home  it  leaves  so  empty  of  its  sweet  presence,  till  it  seems  as  if  there 
were  nothing  but  suffering  in  the  world — when  by  any  chance  we  have  seen 
all  this,  have  fought  our  own  fight  with  a  disease  capable  of  working  such 
woe — then  it  seems  to  us  that  we  would  almost  give  our  own  life  rather  than 
be  the  means  of  diffusing  such  trouble,  of  increasing  the  suffering  of  the 
world,  of  bringing  such  pain  and  sorrow  upon  anothsr  person  who  loved  r. 
child. 

Yet  it  is  an  almost  universal  thing  for  families — ev^ry  individual  of  whom 
would  feel  all  this  shrinking  from  increasing  the  sorrows  of  the  world — in- 
stead of  doing  their  utmost  to  prevent  the  spread  of  the  terrible  infection, 
acting  with  an  almost  criminal  carelessness  in  the  matter,  and  that,  of  course, 
with  no  intention  other  than  good  ones,  but  partly  from  ignorance  and  partly 
from  thoughtlessness  and  partly  from  a  general  trusting  to  luck.  There  if. 
a  case  of  fever  in  the  house;  they  isolate  it,  and  then  they  think  they  have 
done  their  whole  duty;  they  themselves,  if  not  needed  in  attendance,  go  and 
come,  here  and  there,  in  and  out,  as  they  please.  "Oh,  it  is  only  a  slight 
case!"  they  answer  you  if  you  question  their  action,  forgetful  of  the  fact  that 
the  most  malignant  form  can  be  developed  from  tli3  contagion  of  the  very 
slightest  case  of  scarlatina,  scarlatina  being  the  gsnsric  nam-5  of  the  disease 
in  any  form,  and  not  merely  of  its  slightest  developmsnt.  The  doctor  goes 
and  comes  unavoidably  through  the  hall  and  up  and  down  the  common  stair- 
way between  the  door  and  the  sick-room ;  nobody  knows  how  many  germs  of 
the  disease  clinging  to  the  woolen  fibres  of  his  garments  to  be  scattered  in 
the  hall  and  on  the  stairs,  over  which  the  rest  of  the  family  pass  necessarily 
many  times  a  day,  to  gather  them  up  in  their  own  clothes,  and  have  them 
ready  to  disseminate  whenever  they  go  out  among  people.  The  nurses,  too, 
and  those  in  attendance  on  the  sick-room,  go  up  and  down  into  the  kitchen 
and  elsewhere  about  the  house,  carrying  with  them  more  or  less  of  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  room  and  all  that  belongs  to  it,  again  to  be  possibly  caught  up 
by  those  who  have  never  gone  near  the  patient;  and,  as  I  have  said,  the  very 
dogs  and  cats  about  the  place,  to  say  nothing  of  the  flies,  are  liable  to  gather 
the  dangerous  unknown  force  in  their  long  fur,  and  Dring  it  to  the  other 
members  of  the  family.  If  then  these  other  members  of  the  family,  thus  vir- 
tually contaminated,  go  out  freely  on  the  street,  what  deadly  work  is  it  they 
do,  all  unintentionally  and  unconsciously,  what  seeds  of  death  and  sorrow 
do  they  scatter  with  every  wave  of  their  garments  as  they  walk  and  as  they 
encounter  people  on  the  streets  or  venture  into  houses' 


228  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Doubtless  it  is  hard  and  unpleasant,  a  sort  of  imprisonment,  indeed,  for 
people  not  immediately  concerned  in  the  work  for  the  sick  to  shut  themselves 
up  when  such  a  trouble  is  in  the  house ,  but  there  are  always  ways  for  them 
to  get  enough  fresh  air  to  keep  themselves  in  health.  And  for  the  rest  of  it, 
if  the  thing  comes,  it  should  be  received  like  any  other  dispensation,  and 
borne  with  becoming  strength  and  self-denial,  even  if  that  requires  abstinence 
from  church  and  concert  and  call,  the  foregoing  of  the  morning  shopping  and 
the  afternoon  stroll.  For  fully  three  weeks  after  the  patient  is  out  of  danger 
and  convalescing  a  process  called  desquamation — a  shedding  of  the  scarf  skin 
—  goes  on  with  the  little  person,  and  every  flake  of  that  cuticle  wafted 
abroad  is  but  inoculation  of  the  disease  wherever  received.  Isolation, 
then,  can  not  be  too  much  regarded;  every  one  in  the  world  must  now 
know  the  value  and  necessity  of  disinfection,  in  its  most  extended 
form;  but  many  forget  or  are  not  aware  of  the  need  of  this  complete 
isolation.  There  is  nothing  fine  in  the  courage  or  bravado  of  those 
who  would  visit  or  go  errands  to  the  dwellings  where  this  sickness  exists.  It 
is  very  easy  to  be  courageous  for  other  people,  and  it  is  other  people,  and  not 
one's  self,  that  the  grown  person  endangers  by  going  into  the  way  of  the 
disease,  and  those  other  people  helpless  little  children.  Grown  people  are 
seldom  in  much  danger  of  receiving  the  contagion  for  themselves,  but  they 
can  carry  it  in  their  clothes;  and  knowing  this,  and  knowing  the  alarming 
vitality  of  the  germ,  and  how  long  afterward  it  can  maintain  this  devastating 
vitality  with  unimpeached  power,  they  would  be  acting  with  total  want  of 
principle,  and  even  of  decent  human  charity,  if  they  did  not  avoid  going  to 
the  house  where  scarlet  fever  exists,  and  did  not  also  avoid  those  who  come 
out  of  that  house.  When  people  who  are  aware  of  the  danger  do  avoid  those 
who  have  come  out  from  these  fatal  doors,  it  is  not  for  themselves,  it  should 
be  remembered,  nor  indeed  always  for  those  dear  to  them  as  life  itself,  but 
quite  as  often  for  the  sake  of  those  dear  as  life  to  others ;  and  no  one  has  a 
right  to  be  offended  at  this  avoidance.  It  is  not  the  people  themselves  who 
are  thus  avoided ;  it  is  the  terrible  trouble  whose  companionship  lurks  about 
them.  The  very  individuals  who  avoid  them,  or  who  feel  compelled  to  con- 
demn their  want  of  consideration  and  care  in  going  abroad,  would,  it  is  very 
likely,  go  to  their  houses  and  remain  with  them,  helping  and  cheering  them 
as  long  as  the  necessity  lasted,  but  not  daring  to  go  out  into  the  world  again 
while  the  least  danger  of  communicating  the  evil  remained.  Instead  of 
being  offended  at  the  avoidance,  all  persons,  on  the  other  hand,  would  do  well 
to  prevent  the  necessity  of  such  avoidance  by  keeping  out  of  the  way  them- 
selves and  by  voluntarily  and  spontaneously,  with  noble  even  if  Quixotic  re- 
gard, for  others,  maintaining  themselves  and  their  house  in  a  sort  of  quaran- 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


229 


tine,   which,  uncomfortable  as  it  may  be  to  them,   is  infinitely  better  than 
sickness  and  death  and  the  sorrow  of  vacant  houses  to  others 


The  Children  of  the  Poor. 

When  all  has  been  done  that  can  be  done  to  secure  sweet  aii  and  sur- 
roundings to  the  family,  whether  in  town  or  country,  the  heads  of  the  house- 
hold have  reason  to  congratulate  themselves  on  the  immunity  that  their  own 
darlings  have  when  contrasted  with  the  condition  of  the  children  of  the  very 
poor,  especially  of  those  in  the  worst  districts  of  the  city. 

Often  when  people  who  have  loved  and  cared  for  their  children  to  the  last 
degree  have  at  length  lost  them,  they  think  that  if  their  children  had  been 
allowed  to  run  at  large,  unwashed,  unkempt,  unfed,  all  but  undressed,  in  the 
wet  and  in  the  sun,  they  would  have  been  left  alive ;  and  they  look  with  envy 
at  the  washerwoman's  sturdy  babies  rolling  in  the  gutter  as  they  go  by,  while 
their  own  dear  ones,  on  which  they  spent  such  cares,  are  laid  away  in  silence. 

Their  complaint  and  their  envy,  however,  betray  simply  an  ignorance 
that  is  widespread  concerning  the  very  great  mortality  among  the  children  of 
the  poor  in  cities.  With  these  poor  it  is  only  the  sturdy  and  the  hardy  that  do 
not  die  in  infancy ;  those  are  examples  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  When 
they,  in  turn,  have  children  of  their  own,  those  children  inherit  a  great  deal 
of  their  parents'  hardiness,  and  live  through  nearly  everything  but  murder. 
But  murder  comes  to  them ;  and  the  community  allows  the  murderer  to  stalk 
boldly  unchallenged  at  broad  mid-day,  while  he  decimates  the  ranks  of  those 
that  can  not  afford  houses  by  themselves,  with  light  and  st>ace,  pure  air,  pure 
water  and  dry  floors. 

Of  all  the  children  rolling  in  the  gutters  only  a  mere  fraction  endure  the 
rough  treatment  and  live.  In  damp  dwellings,  pervaded  by  the  foul  smell  of 
countless  sinks  and  deposits  of  filth,  with  fever  already,  doubtless,  in  more 


23o  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

than  one  of  all  the  many  rooms  of  the  tenement,  with  little  to  eat,  with  no 
cleanliness,  with  unhealthy  beds,   with  insufficient  warmth  in  winter,   with 
terrible  heats  in  summer,  what  an  amount  of  strength  does  it  not  need  in  or- 
der to  meet  such  ills  and  conquer  them !      The  mother  who  nurses  these 
children  in  their  babyhood  is  half  starved  herself.     As  soon  as  they  are  old 
enough  to  be  left,  and  sometimes  before,  she  is  obliged  to  let  them  look  out 
for  themselves  while  she  is  away  at  her  daily  drudgery,  from  which  she  re- 
turns to  them  heated  and  tired  out,  and  all  unfit;  a  little  older,  and  they  are 
out-doors  in  her  absence,  fighting  with  the  great  Shanghai  for  an  apple-core 
or  with  the  neighboring  bulldog  for  a  bone,  or  in-doors  setting  fire  to  their 
clothing;  and  woe  betide  them,  at  all  times,  if  they  fall  sick,  for  then  the 
whole  grand  army  of  noxious  things  marches  into  the  breach,  and  it  is  found 
almost  impossible  for  very  sick  children  of  these  quarters  to  recover,  if  left 
in  the  place  where  they  fell, 'as  any  physician  will  tell  you  who  has  had  the 
pain  of  seeing  these  children  mowed  down.     What  the  effect  of  their  sur- 
roundings is  may  be  judged  from  the  following  instance:     "About  the  year 
1767  it  was  ascertained  that  not  more  than  one  in  twenty-four  of  the  poor 
children  received  into  the  work-houses  in  London  lived  to  be  a  year  old;  so 
that  out  of  two  thousand  and  eight  hundred,  the  average  number  annually 
admitted,  two  thousand  six  hundred  and  ninety  died.     This  alarming  mortal-' 
ity  induced  the  Parliament  to  pass  an  act  obliging  the  parish  officers  to  send 
their  infant  poor  to  be  nursed  in  the  country  at  a  proper  distance  from  town. 
After  this  measure  was  adopted  only  four  hundred  and  fifty  out  of  the  whole 
number  died  annually,  and  the  greater  part  of  those  deaths  happened  during 
the  three  weeks  that  the  children  were  kept  in  the  work-houses."     Human 
nature — at  any  rate,  its  physical  portion — has  not  changed  during  the  century 
sufficiently  to  weaken  the  force  of  such  a  statement,  and  no  broader  comment- 
ary can  ever  be  made  on  the  way  in  which  every  country  wastes  its  bone  and 
sinew  in  permitting  such  a  state  of  things  to  continue,  and  in  not  making  the 
purification  of  its  by-ways  and  alleys  a  matter  of  public  economy.     Of  course 
more  than  air  is  needed — water,  time  in  which  to  use  it,  and  food — but  clean 
air  would  go  a  great  way  toward  obviating  every  evil,  and  would  doubtless 
vastly  decrease  the  bill  of  mortality.     Air  that  is  unvitiated  is  positively  es^ 
scntial  to  the  health  of  children  in  dwellings  and  out-doors;  it  is  by  its  means 
that  the  blood  is  oxygenated,  purified  of  ill  elements,   and  kept  bounding 
along  the  veins;  and  it  is  through  the  medium  of  bad  air  that  a  fearful  throng 
of  diseases  are  admitted  to  the  tender  system.     And  meanwhile,  however  it 
may  be  with  the  poor,  there  is  many  a  mother  among  those  by  no  means  poor 
who  thinks  her  own  dead  darling  wanted  for  nothing,  when,  if  she  but  knew 
the  truth,  it  wanted  the  air  of  heaven,  and  the  air  with  which  she  so  carefully 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  231 

surrounded  and  shut  it  in,  the  air  of  her  foul  cellar  and  unpurified  sinks,  was 
its  murderer. 

When  we  have  abolished  all  our  nuisances,  we  will  find  that  we  have  abol- 
ished with  them  one  almost  as  bad  as  many  of  the  others,  that  of  the  omni- 
present fly,  the  little  wretch  that  makes  life  in  town  or  suburb  equally  hard  to 
bear,  but  who  will  not  live  in  multitude  unless  he  has  foul  provender  on  which 
to  batten.  I  remember  seeing  at  an  entertainment  of  one  of  the  many  min- 
strel troops  of  old  times,  whose  members,  by  the  way,  a  friend  of  the  colored 
people  declared  were  blacker  inside  than  outside,  for  all  their  "quips  and 
cranks  and  wanton  wiles,"  a  performance,  known  as  the  "Lively  Flea,"  which 
always  elicits  roars  of  laughter  and  rounds  of  applause,  as  the  play-bills  have 
it.  It  is  a  very  simple  performance,  a  mere  monodrame;  for  it  consists  solely 
of  one  rather  ragged  colored  person  sitting  in  a  chair  and  playing  his  banjo — 
the  other  performer  being  invisible,  not  to  say  imaginary'.  As  the  player 
dreamily  picks  the  string  and  hums  the  strain,  he  just  as  dreamily  pauses  to 
fillip  his  ear,  as  if  something  had  disturbed  him  there,  but  it  was  not  much 
matter,  and  goes  on  with  his  tune.  But  before  the  end  of  another  bar  the 
right  hand  leaves  the  string  again  to  give  a  heartier  fillip  on  another  spot, 
and  still  the  tune  goes  on ;  when  suddenly  the  left  hand,  flinging  the  neck  of 
the  banjo  to  the  right,  gives,  no  fillip,  but  a  good  sound  slap  on  a  fresh  por- 
tion ot  the  person,  and  the  music  resumes  its  course  again,  as  if  that  thing 
was  settled.  But  hardly  has  another  stave  of  the  sweet  song  been  sung — so 
sweet  that  the  audience  begins  to  be  as  much  annoyed  by  that  lively  flea  as 
the  sufterer  more  directly  concerned — when  up  goes  the  right  hand  dreamily 
again  and  seems  to  rub  away  some  slight  thing  on  the  cheek  or  in  the  whis- 
ker, and  no  sooner  is  that  done  than  the  left  is  obliged  to  explore  the  back  of 
the  neck,  and  the  right  picks  a  string  and  darts  off  to  the  sole  of  the  foot, 
picks  another  and  flies  to  the  left  scapula,  picks  another  and  deals  a  blow  at  a 
knee-cap,  suddenly  catches  the  banjo  by  one  string  as  the  left  hand  in  an 
agony  flies  to  the  distracted  forehead,  and  the  melody  of  the  banjo  and  of  the 
song  breaks  up  incontinently  in  a  sort  of  double  and  treble  shuffle  dance,  in 
•\Yhich  hands,  feet,  head,  shoulders,  hips,  and  banjo  all  join  in  pursuit  of  that 
lively  flea,  which  is  caught  and  cracked  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  spectators, 
in  order  that  the  singer  may  calmly  and  sweetly  conclude  his  song. 

Well,  we  all  laughed  at  the  poor  plantation  hand  and  his  flea,  some  of  us 
in  spite  of  ourselves,  and  all  of  us  without  the  least  idea  that  scarcely  would 
the  summer  come  before  we  ourselves  would  be  as  laughable  objects,  figuring 
in  just  such  a  drama,  with  the  simple  difference  that  the  place  of  that  invisi- 
ble lively  flea  would  be  taken  by  the  only  too  visible  and  just  as  lively  fly — • 
that  nimble  wretch  that  the  moment  we  have  finished  proclaiming  our  July 


232  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

independence,  surrounds  us  with  his  legions,  is  in  our  bread,  in  our  tea,  in 
our  ink,  in  our  cup  generally;  that  gets  crushed  in  our  books,  lost  in  the 
labyrinth  of  our  hair,  tickles  our  eyes,  grudges  us  our  flesh  and  blood,  makes 
our  life  a  burden  to  us! 

The  Lively  Fly. 

Yet  what  an  innocent  being  the  little  creature  seems  when  in  his  single 
blessedness  he  hums  about  the  wintry  pane !  A  cheerful  and  companionable 
soul  left  over  from  the  summer,  and  managing  to  exist  on  what  sunshine  he 
can  find  in  our  window.  If  we  do  not  hold  him  really  in  affectionate  regard 
then,  yet  we  would  no  sooner  harm  him  than  harm  a  household  pet.  We  put 
a  bit  of  sugar  in  his  path,  we  brush  down  the  spider  that  waylays  him  and 
we  feel  flattered  if  he  deserts  his  luminous  retreat  to  pay  a  call  to  the  wax  in 
our  work-basket,  or  ramble  round  the  margin  of  our  inkstand,  or  stroll  across 
our  hand.  But  when  at  length  the  summer  comes  we  realize  in  ourselves  all 
the  difference  that  exists  between  the  calm  inhabitant  of  temperate  zones  and 
the  fiery  and  cruel  native  of  the  tropics.  Ruskin  tells  us  that  the  modification 
of  the  curve  of  the  drip-stone  in  the  Lombard  architecture,  as  seen  in  the 
North  and  seen  again  under  Italian  skies,  marks  the  whole  round  curve  of  the 
earth  between  those  distant  parallels ;  and  just  as  broad  a  curve  of  the  earth 
is  shown  in  the  difference  in  our  feelings  toward  the  fly  in  December  a.nd  in 
July,  and  we  pursue  the  little  innocent  of  other  weather  as  vindictively  as 
though  he  was  some  wild  beast  out  of  his  lair;  as  vindictively  as  he  in  his  turn 
pursues  us.' 

It  seems  impossible  to  us  then  to  believe  that  we  were  once  so  weak  as  to 
regard  him  as  harmless  and  show  him  mercy.  If  we  really  did,  we  anathe- 
matize the  folly  that  in  saving  one  saved  the  mother  of  millions.  That  little 
being,  so  busy,  so  blithe,  so  much  occupied  with  his  toilette,  is  no  longer  a 
friendly  sprite,  but  has  become  foul  and  unclean,  singly  impish,  and  in  mul- 
titude demoniac.  His  pleasant  song  has  changed  to  a  bagpipe  drone,  save 
when  it  gathers  in  a  shrill  alarm  of  attack.  We  hear  it  faintly  across  our 
dreams,  sounding  the  signal  as  the  first  flush  of  the  aurora  runs  before  the 
dawn ;  and  from  that  dead  hour  of  prime  till  at  last  we  rise,  haggard  and  un- 
rested,  and  driven  from  our  stronghold,  we  are  engaged  in  a  hand-to-hand 
strife  with  him  for  the  possession  of  our  nose  or  ears  or  eyes,  whichever  it  is 
that  he  may  have  taken  a  fancy  for,  and  we  feel  like  that  dull  book-magnate 
that  Mr.  Browning  threw  into  the  puddle  of  the  hollow  tree,  where  the  little 
live  creatures  "tickled  and  toused  and  browsed  him  all  over."  We  descend 
to  breakfast.  Be  the  safeguards  what  they  may,  we  find  two  or  three  of  him 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


in  the  cream  jug,  a  swarm 

of  him  in  the  sugar  bowl ; 

he  hovers  over  the  chops, 

gets  mired  in  the  butter, 

watches    his    chance    for 

the  morsel  on  the  way  to 

our  mouths,  and  we  feel  a 

sort  of  surprise  on  break- 
ing the  eggs  or  the  baked 

potatoes  that  he  does  not 

tumble    out    of    them. 

There   is  not   a  point  of 

the  rest  of  the  day  that  he 

fails  to  dispute   with  us. 

There  is  a  mould  in  the 

inkstand ;  we  fish  it  out — 

it  is  a  raft  of  flies.  We 
sit  down  with  our  sewing; 
he  comes  and  sticks  needles  and  pins  into  us.  He  is  up  our  sleeve,  down  our 
neck,  between  our  lips.  He  grows  aware  of  the  charms  of  the  baby  in  her 
warm  and  rosy  nap,  and  eats  her  up  alive.  We  go  for  our  bath,  he  is  there 
before  us;  we  go  to  dinner,  and  he  has  rendered  us  suspicious  of  every  object, 
and  taken  the  zest  from  appetite;  while  at  tea  he  mixes  himself  with  the 
blueberries,  and  turns  plain  cake  to  currant.  We  brush  him  off,  and  he  re- 
turns, with  a  defiant  and  insulting  buzz  and  threat,  nearer  than  before;  we 
aim  a  blow  at  him,  and  inflict  a  fatal  one  upon  ourselves.  We  hail  a  spider 
as  a  bosom  friend.  And  at  last  we  grow  tired  of  the  unequal  contest,  and 
resolve  upon  getting  sleep  while  we  may,  and  forgetful  of  the  morning's  rout, 
we  ascend  to  the  cool  seclusion  of  our  respective  rooms.  Already  half  asleep 
we  open  the  door,  and  the  instant  the  light  enters  up  starts  from  their  own 
slumbers  on  every  coigne  of  vantage  a  cloud  of  witnesses,  filling  all  the  air 
with  that  hot  and  hateful  hum ;  and  we  close  the  windows,  and  set  down  the 
lamp,  and  tie  a  knot  in  the  end  of  a  towel,  and  go  to  work  and  slay  like  Sam- 
son. 

C  est  le  premier  pas  qui  coute.  After  that  we  feel  like  the  Malays,  or  the 
Berserkers,  who  run  with  their  big  knives,  crying,  "Kill!  kill!"  With  what 
vigor  we  prosecute  destruction,  and  are  almost  destroyed  ourselves  in  the 
effort!  We  set  dishes  of  water,  in  which  the  patent  poisoned  paper  is  soak- 
ing, about  the  house,  and  the  flies  drink  and  die,  and  the  kitten,  beloved  play- 
thing, and  the  Spitz,  the  baby's  faithful  guardian,  eat  the  fallen  victims  of 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

that  poison,  and  die,  too.  We  procure  cruel  sheets  of  a  viscid  preparation  and 
lay  them  in  tempting  spots,  and  the  flies  alight  never  to  extricate  themselves 
from  the  toils  again,  and  a  gust  of  wind  blows  those'  sticky  sheets  over  our 
sewing,  upon  our  best  book-rack,  upon  our  new  silk,  and  the  flies  avenge 
themselves  in  dying.  Finally  we  buy  a  cage,  where  a  wire  cone  fits  inside  of 
a  wire  cylinder,  a  tiny  aperture  in  the  top  of  the  cone  admitting  the  prey  to 
the  cylinder  but  not  appearing  very  obvious  to  him  again,  and  we  observe 
with  eagerness  the  adventuring  fly  as  he  slowly  explores  that  cone  and  ap- 
proaches that  aperture.  What  a  dramatic  interest  attaches  to  the  moment! 
He  is  the  hero  of  a  tragedy — he  is  David  in  the  cave's  mouth — he  is  Jean 
Valjean.  -He  nears  the  opening  of  the  trap:  will  he  mount?  will  he  descend? 
He  thinks  better  of  it;  he  goes  down,  and  our  hearts  go  down  with  him;  he 
wheels,  he  puts  his  head  over  the  brink — for  ourselves,  we  palpitate — he  con- 
siders, he  crawls  boldly  in,  he  is  lost!  And  wretches  that  we  are — with  but 
little  difference  in  all  these  centuries  between  ourselves  and  those  Roman 
women  who  watched  wild  beast  and  gladiator  fight  in  the  arena,  and  turned 
their  thumbs  down  at  the  end — we  feel  paid  for  all  our  vexation,  and  we 
wateh  fly  after  fly  passing  through  the  fatal  aperture,  and  we  go  off  to  sleep, 
secure  in  the  slaughter  of  Patroclus  and  his  men — to  wake  up  and  find  Achilles 
and  his  myrmidons  in  the  field,  fell  avengers. 

For  it  was  only  a  momentary  victory,  a  mere  ruse  de  guerre;  and  we  are 
half  inclined  to  abandon  ourselves  to  fate  and  the  fly,  and  to  believe  that  com- 
ing into  the  world  before  the  extermination  of  vermin  we  came  an  aeon  too 
soon,  till  we  remember  a  happy  possibility,  and  at  every  window  we  have  a 
screen  of  wire  gauze,  better  than  the  Chinese  wall  against  our  enemy,  and  a 
thing  which  the  least  ingenuity  can  devise  and  shape,  and  we  make  that  place 
a  desert  so  far  as  the  fly  is  concerned,  and  breathe  again  in  peace,  sure  that 
we  are  not  going  to  be  tickled  wide  awake  out  of  our  pet  nap,  and  that  we  are 
not  going  to  be  inoculated  with  all  sorts  of  diseases  from  that  little  proboscis 
that  fed  last  one  knows  not  where.  And  yet  fools  that  we  are,  we  find  our- 
selves in  the  end  regarding  the  one  fly  left  over  and  humming  in  the  window- 
pane  as  we  did  before — as  a  cheerful  and  companionable  sort  of  cherub,  who 
reminds  us  of  summer  and  its  vanished  glories. 


At   Autumn  Time. 

And  when  we  have  enjoyed  our  screens  all  summer,  and  have  seen  to 
sink  and  drain  and  spout  and  cellar,  and  to  all  the  work  necessary  to  health 
which  we  find  it  best  to  do  in  the  fall,  whether  our  lives  be  cast  in  town  or 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


235 


country,  we  have  time  to  look  about  and  enjoy  a  world  of  small  dramas:still 
going  on  about  us,  and  at  which  we  may  assist  if  we  will  as  spectators.  One 
observes  then,  for  instance,  just  as  much  in  the  city  park  as  in  the  rural  field, 
the  way  nature  works  in  her  laboratory,  the  way  in  which  the  plants  prepare 
themselves  for  their  wintry  term,  and  in  which  the  little  wild  animals,  even 
the  squirrels  and  their  kind  in  town,  make  themselves  ready  for  that  great 
general  enemy,  the  cold. 


The   Birds   When  the   Days   Shorten. 

There  is  nothing  more  interesting  to  watch  than  the  birds  and  their 
habits,  at  the  time  when  the  days  begin  to  shorten ;  the  manner  in  which 
they  congregate  and  confabulate  in  daily  increasing  numbers;  the  swarms 
on  swarms  of  them  that  suddenly  rise  from  some  low  meadow  as  you 
drive  by,  and  for  one  beautiful  moment  darken  the  sky,  while  their  multi- 
tudinous wings  quiver  and  beat  and  separate;  the  trial  flights  in  which  they 
seem  to  be  practicing  for  the  long  migration;  the  wonderful  music  that 
their  innumerable  shapes  seem  to  dot  along  the  bars  made  by  the  tele- 
graph and  telephone  wires  where  they  alight;  the  vast  chattering  and  hum- 
ming wherever  they  are ;  and  the  profound  indifference  of  those  birds  that 
have  no  idea  of  making  a  journey,  but  that  intend  to  take  the  winter  as  they 
find  it,  notably  the  town  sparrows. 

How  much  charm  these  bright  beings  have  added  to  the  year,  when  one 


236  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

has  been  where  one  could  observe  them,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  compute ;  for 
who  can  tell  the  value  of  a  lilting  measure,  or  weigh  the  worth  of  a  flash  of 
color?  The  thrill  of  gladness  one  feels  when,  almost  before  the  ground  is 
bare  of  snow,  a  robin's  pipe  is  heard;  the  sweetness  that  fills  the  dead  prime 
of  the  day  when  one  awakes  before  the  dawn  sends  his  flushes  up  the  east, 
and  hears  the  world  alive  with  music — who  would  forego  these  that  has 
known  them,  or  change  them  for  other  rapture  that  out-door  nature  gives? 
What  amusement  they  make  when,  fat  and  saucy  with  all  the  stolen  cherries, 
they  skip  along  the  grass  at  your  side,  and  presently  are  disputing  with  your 
fingers  the  very  pear  ard  plum  as  they  ripen !  And  what  heartsome  pleasure 
they  give  in  their  first  and  in  their  second  nesting,  as  they  steal  the  thread 
from  your  spool  on  the  window-sill,  the  string  from  the  baby's  toy  and  even 
alight  upon  the  old  horse  himself  to  pluck  some  good  strong  hairs  from  his 
tail  for  the  better  security  of  the  new  cradle — anything  exceeding  their  sturdy 
impudence  never  having  been  known.  Then  come  the  excitements  of  the 
brood  to  the  on-lookers — the  amazement  at  the  tremendous  greed  of  the  little 
ones,  and  the  untold  lives  sacrificed  at  their  shrines;  the  admiration  of  the 
show  of  fondness  and  industry  by  the  father,  who  is  fabled  to  share  the  labors 
equally  with  the  mother,  but  who  brings,  comparatively  speaking,  very  few 
worms  to  the  young  Molochs,  and  sings  only  when  he  thinks  it  is  about  time 
that  his  wife  was  done  with  this  business;  and  the  horror  and  anxiety  when 
one  of  the  fledgelings  falls  from  the  lofty  nest — out  of  which  it  is  a  wonder 
they  did  not  all  fall  at  the  first — and  can  not  be  returned,  and  Grimalkin  is 
known  to  be  ranging  abroad^  A  friend  of  ours  living  in  town  once  found  an 
almost  featherless  member  of  one  of  these  little  broods  peeping  in  the  grass, 
and  neither  nest  nor  parents  being  in  sight,  took  the  little  orphan  into  the 
house,  and  placing  it  in  a  soft  nest  of  cotton-wool  in  a  cage,  fed  it  with  the 
yolks  of  hard-boiled  eggs,  put  down  its  gaping  throat  on  a  pen  -handle,  making 
herself  a  slave  to  that  throat  by  rising  long  before  day  to  light  her  spirit-lamp 
and  boil  her  egg.  As  the  little  creature  thrived  and  grew,  she  felt  it  must 
have  stronger  food,  and  stifling  her  repugnance,  procured  earth-worms  with 
her  own  delicate  fingers,  and  proceeded  to  mince  them  for  Master  Rob's 
dinners.  By  this  time  the  little  creature  was  as  round  and  feathered  and 
shining  as  a  bird  could  be,  and  skipped  from  room  to  room  after  his  mistress, 
stoutly  resisted  the  cage,  and  visited  her  pillow  every  morning  to  pick  her 
eyes  open  when  it  was  time  for  his  breakfast.  At  length  he  was  able  to  live 
upon  the  same  fare  as  the  family  had,  and  took  his  regular  place  at  the  break- 
fast table,  the  moment  that  the  bell  rang  flying  to  the  sugar  bowl,  helping 
himself  afterward  to  his  favorite  dish,  and  always  perching  on  the  morning 
paper,  and  fighting  for  his  rights  upon  it,  having  the  advantage  of  the  oth.^ 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  237 

children  in  his  wings,  which  bore  him  off  at  a  signal  of  danger,  and  kept  him 
out  of  reach  till  his  offenses  were  forgotten.  Anything  like  a  racket  de- 
lighted his  little  soul ;  any  noise  was  as  good  to  him  as  the  piping  of  Pan , 
in  the  putting  in  of  coal  he  flew  to  and  fro  through  the  cloud  of  black  dust, 
enjoying  himself  with  song  and  chatter;  while  the  manoeuvres  of  the  laun- 
dress and  the  iridescence  of  the  soap-bubbles  of  her  *'suds"  gave  him  such 
peculiar  pleasure  that  once  when  she  left  her  occupation  for  some  other  he 
gave  battle,  and  nobody  knows  with  what  result,  if  his  mistress  had  not  been 
called  to  the  scene  by  the  woman's  screams,  as  she  had  often  before  been 
summoned  by  the  indignant  cries  of  the  cats  that  held  him  only  in  terror,  by 
no  means  regarding  him  as  an  object  of  prey,  but  as  a  monster  that  had  in- 
vaded their  domestic  peace.  Finally,  one  day,  this  little  imp  that  so  took  the 
world  for  all  his  own,  slipped  out  of  an  open  window,  was  heard  of  once  at 
the  windows  of  another  house  a  couple  of  blocks  away,  and  then,  like  a  bird 
that  flew  through  the  Northumbrian  king's  palace  from  one  darkness  to  an- 
other, was  seen  no  more.  But  our  friend  would  not  have  been  without  the 
excitement  and  pleasure  of  his  summer's  visit  for  anything  you  could 
name. 

And  not  only  are  such  little  romances  afforded  us  by  the  tiny  creatures, 
but  there  are  the  epics  and  heroics  of  their  skirmishes  and  deadly  fights,  to 
watch  which,  if  old  Greek  poets  could  condescend  to  describe  the  battles  of 
the  pygmies  and  the  cranes,  are  not  entirely  beneath  our  notice.  In  fact,  to 
the  last  of  the  bluebirds  that,  when  we  walk  abroad  in  the  country  01  come  to 
the  end  of  our  trolley-ride  from  town,  we  see  fluttering  in  crowds  about  the 
berries  of  ash  and  elder  and  woodbine  just  before  the  robins  go,  to  the  flocks 
of  chickadees  that  suddenly  appear  with  the  snow,  to  the  long  strings  of  the 
wild-geese  that  go  clanging  through  the  heavens  with  their  wild  music,  to 
the  witch-like  crows  that  never  go  at  all,  if  one  uses  one's  senses  there  is 
hardly  pleasanter  amusement  to  be  had  than  is  found  in  following  the  habits 
of  these  little  actors  on  the  boards  of  summer,  with  the  human  passions  re- 
peated in  a  miniature  mimicry,  and  in  a  grand  theatre  where  the  blue  sky 
and  the  waving  boughs  make  the  painted  scenery  and  properties,  where  the 
winds  and  waters  are  real,  the  orchestra,  seen  and  unseen,  pipes  from  the 
leafy  screens  of  the  summer  that  is  over  and  gone  all  too  soon,  and  whose 
departure  makes  one  impatient  for  the  next,  that,  among  all  the  other  prob 
lems  to  be  solved,  it  may  be  seen  if  the  empty  nest  will  be  refilled  again, 
and  if  the  same  bird  will  sing  again  to  his  mate,  to  his  brood,  to  the  universe, 
that  song  to  which,  as  Michelet  says,  he  himself  is,  after  all,  the  most  delicate 
auditor,  but  which  may  even  give  pleasure  to  that  creating  power  "gui  regarde 
tendrement  un  brin  d'herbe  autantqu'une  elotle, " 


83»  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Light-Hearted  October. 

And  while  ali  this  goes  on,  we  seem  to  be  breathing  new  life,  and  sure 
that  all  is  right  in  our  home  we  enjoy  the  invigoration  of  early  autumn  with 
a  clear  conscience.  It  seems  strange  that  we  associate  with  this  season  the 
idea  of  cheerfulness  and  mirth  and  light-hearted  labor. 

One  might  suppose  that  exactly  the  opposite  effect  would  be  produced 
upon  us  by  all  the  threatening  tokens.  The  dreary  time  of  short  dark  days, 
gray  weather,  and  storms  is  approaching,  the  imprisonment  of  the  snow,  the 
bleak  winter  cold.  The  flowers  are  gone,  the  leaves  are  going ;  frost  is  already 
upon  us;  the  summer's  sauntering  is  over,  the  moon-lit  stroll,  the  sunset  sail; 
the  winds  are  keen  and  nipping,  the  ground  is  damp  and  sodden,  and  one 
might  suppose  it  debatable  whether  it  were  best  to  keep  alive  or  not,  instead 
of  rejoicing  ourselves  over  the  circumstance  of  life,  as  if,  under  such  condi- 
tions, it  were  a  boon  worth  the  having. 

And  yet  such  is  the  perversity  of  human  nature  that  not  when  spring- 
rustles  all  her  promise  of  perfume  and  blossom,  of  warmth  and  ease  and 
beauty,  when  the  sap  mounts  and  the  blood  bubbles  and  the  year  opens  with 
renewal  of  youth's  freshness,  are  we  half  so  cheerful  as  when  this  red  autumn 
hangs  out  his  banners.  We  take  no  heed  then  of  the  future,  and  we  forget 
that  all  the  splendor  of  his  army  changes  presently,  like  fairy  money,  to 
ashes. 

"Bright  yellow,  red,  and  orange, 
The  leaves  come  down  in  hosts, 
/he  trees  are  Indian  princes, 
But  soon  they'll  turn  to  ghosts" — 

ghosts  whose  apparition  does  not  give  us  an  apprehension.  The  dazzling 
color  is  enough  for  us  now ;  and  with  the  golden  sunshine  of  the  elms  and 
beeches,  the  royal  purple  of  the  ash,  the  dull  crimson  and  brown  of  the  oak, 
the  superb  and  scarlet  flaming  of  maple  and  tupelo  and  sumac,  the  whole 
atmosphere  is  full  of  splendor,  and  we  catch  the  spirit  of  jubilee — perhaps  s 
battailous  and  triumphant  jubilee — as  we  march  out  to  conquer  the  coming- 
hosts  ot  winter, 

"Red  leaves,  trailing, 

Fall  unfailing, 

Dropping,  sailing, 
From  the  wood 

That,  unpliant, 

Stands  defiant. 

Like  a  giant 
Dropping  blood. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  239 

Autumn  Cheer. 

How  much  of  this  cheerfulness  is  due  to  the  bracing  influence  of  the  air, 
which  is  apt  to  work  like  iron  in  the  veins,  and  how  much  to  the  effect  of 
light  and  color  upon  the  nerves,  it  is  not  quite  easy  to  determine.  By  the 
bracing  atmosphere  of  the  sea-side  or  of  the  mountains,  however,  we  are  not 
always  made  particularly  cheerful,  but  by  that  of  the  sunny  fall  days,  other 
things  being  equal,  the  happy  change  seldom  fails  to  be  wrought,  and  we  may 
proudly  imagine  in  ourselves  an  unguessed  and  unconscious  susceptibility  to 
beauty  that  is  able  to  work  miracles  and  turn  even  dead  leaves  into  the  bril- 
liant jewels  of  the  trees  of  the  Arabian's  garden. 

There  is  such  an  illumination  present  everywhere,  such  an  airy  splendor 
lifting  the  woods  themselves,  such  a  field  of  the  cloth  of  gold  set  among  all 
dead  ferns  and  brakes  and  stubble,  there  is  such  a  lofty  soaring  of  the  lighted 
sky  above  us  and  around,  that  the  will  of  beauty  must  be  wrought  unaware 
upon  the  veriest  dolt  and  clown  among  us.  Far  off,  too,  on  the  horizon  such 
hazes  brood,  with  their  soft  deep  violet  tints,  now  and  then  letting  a  sheet  of 
sunlight  through  to  sift  upon  the  scene,  leading  into  the  unknown,  and  bor- 
rowing of  the  infinite,  and  giving  a  certain  satisfaction  in  the  view;  for 
wherever  any  suggestion  of  the  infinite  is  given,  comfort  is  to  be  found  by 
those  mortals  to  whom  the  idea  of  mortality  is  heavy  with  gloom. 

Thus  it  is  not  impossible  that  out  of  the  mere  affairs  of  the  fancy,  the 
hues  of  leaf  and  sky  and  landscape,  a  positive  happiness  is  wrought  quite 
equal  to  the  happiness  usually  given  by  what  are  reckoned  more  substantial 
things.  It  is  well  known  that  among  the  most  cheerful  sensations  produced 
by  externals  are  those  produced  by  the  various  degrees  of  red,  especially  the 
shades  of  cherry,  carnation,  and  deep  crimson.  The  coquette  understands 
this  as  she  knots  a  red  ribbon  in  her  hair,  and  the  beauty,  too,  whose  damask 
blush  is  her  chief  ornament;  the  crimson-carpeted  room  is  the  one  which  in- 
stantly reminds  us  of  warmth  and  pleasure,  and  in  which  any  great  fall  of 
spirits  from  a  high  temperature  seems  impossible ;  it  is  the  gray  sea  picture 
'into  which  Turner  thrusts  .the  vermilion-colored  buoy,  and  transforms  it;  it 
is  the  russet-colored  autumn  that  nature  enlivens  with  the  scarlet  leaf.  And 
yet  these  reds  are  the  color  of  blood,  the  signal  of  battle,  the  exponent  of 
slaughter  and  of  fire ;  and  why  a  color  that  is  the  very  flag  of  war,  and  the 
representative  of  cruel  wounds  and  death,  should  give  us  pleasant  and  com- 
fortable sensations  is  only  explicable  by  the  supposition  that  in  itself  the  rosy 
ray  acts  as  a  stimulant  upon  the  nerves,  exciting  these  comfortable  sensations. 
There  is,  indeed,  something  rather  flattering  to  our  vanity  in  the  belief  that 
we  are  thus  strongly  affected  by  such  aesthetic  forces;  but  if  it  is  supposable 


24o  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS 

that  the  most  of  us  have  souls,  the  idea  is  neither  very  extraordinary  nor  fan- 
tastic. 

But  quite  apart  from  this  merely  intellectual  or  nervous  action  upon  our 
batteries  in  this  matter  of  the  autumn  cheer,  is  the  much  more  earthly  and 
solid  content  occasioned  by  the  completion  of  harvest  and  harvesting,  the 
knowledge  that  the  round  world  over  the  laborer  is  reaping  his  reward,  that 
the  earth  has  again  paid  her  dividend  to  the  race,  that  nature  has  done  her 
duty  and  kept  her  promise,  that  the  Great  Guardian  still  sees  that  neither 
seed-time  nor  harvest  fails  in  its  season.  Indeed,  if  the  bursting  of  the  leaf 
and  flower  makes  one  feel  that  God  is  alive  in  His  world,  then  the  ripening 
of  the  broad  fields  from  east  to  west  of  the  planet,  the  filling  of  the  vast 
granaries,  the  gift  of  the  year's  food  to  man  and  beast,  give  one  even  firmer 
assurance  that  the  great  pulse  is  beating  through  the  days  and  nights,  and 
that  the  eternal  life  and  the  eternal  love  go  hand  in  hand.  What  wonder, 
then,  that,  although  we  do  not  pause  to  consider  it,  the  consciousness  that 
we  are  so  surrounded  by  the  Divine  care  that  no  malice  of  the  fierce  elements 
can  reach  us  should  make  us  light-hearted  enough  to  go  forward  gayly  to 
meet  the  icy  darts  that  winter  slings,  secure  in  our  power  of  protection,  and 
delighting  to  turn  old  Januarius  from  an  enemy  to  a  friend  ?  Who,  indeed, 
can  be  anything  but  gay,  unless  there  are  some  facts  of  actual  care  and  sor- 
row and  pain  to  supervene  and  strip  away  all  the  bright  glamor  from  Jife, 
when  the  world  around  is  so  gay  that  nature  seems  to  make  holiday  and  to 
hold  him  a  churl  who  refuses  to  join  the  revel — the  revel  where  the  noon  sun 
hangs  in  an  azure  sky,  and  soft  breezes  curl,  and  resinous  balms  inform  the 
air,  and  splendid  colors  set  the  scene  ?  And  then,  as  twilight  hangs  in  the 
heaven,  ready  to  fall,  and  a  soft  solemnity  of  that  hour  takes  the  place  of 
jollity,  it  seems  rather  a  sacrifice  of  praise  and  thanks,  on  whose  altar  has 
been  shed  the  heart's  blood  of  the  year.  And  in  that  who  is  it,  whether  full 
of  bliss  or  full  of  pain,  that  has  no  part  ? 

Thus  we  see  that,  after  all,  there  is  nothing  so  singular  in  this  autumn 
cheerfulness,  and  that,  indeed,  a  contrary  spirit  would  be  the  singular  thing, 
while  few  follies  could  be  greater,  having  this  charming  present,  than  to 
ignore  it  through  fear  of  to-morrow,  and  that  it  is  wisdom  as  well  as  pleasure 
to  enjoy  this  bright  day  while  it  lasts,  since 

"before  to-morrow's  sun 

Cold  winds   may  rise,  and  shrouding  shadows  dun 
Obscure  the  scene :  yet  shall  these  fading  hues 
And  fleeting  forms  their  loveliness  transfuse 
Into  the  mind,  and  memory  shall  burn 
The  painting  in  on  her  enameled  urn 
In  undecaying  colors." 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS  241 

By  the  Hearth. 

And  when  the  heavier  chill  does  come,  and  the  keen  wind  and  cold  dews 
announce  the  end  of  out-door  freedom,  with  what  lively  pleasure  do  we  light 
the  first  fire,  whether  it  is  for  the  many-colored  flame  of  the  driftwood  fire  at 
the  shore,  or  the  branches  and  cone  of  the  wood-side  place,  or  the  sea-coal  of 
the  grate  in  the  back  parlor  of  the  city  house! 

No  one  ever  feels  that  summer  is  quite  long  enough,  that  it  is  quite  time 
for  it  when  the  early  dark  draws  down  and  cuts  short  the  once  long  day ;  and 
when  the  cool  autumn  dusk  appears,  most  of  us  sympathize  with  those  who 
speak  of  heaven  under  no  other  name  than  that  of  the  Summer-Land.  For 
whatever  pleasures  of  its  own  there  may  be  in  the  coming  imprisonment  of 
winter,  they  are  still  in  strong  measure,  the  pleasures  of  imprisonment,  while 
summer,  on  the  other  hand,  is  one  long  freedom.  One  hardly  tires  of  the 
large  out-door  life  in  its  infinite  variety,  the  going  and  coming  at  will,  the 
liberty  of  costume,  the  abounding  verdure  and  bloom,  the  unrestricted  enjoy- 
ment of  breeze  and  bird  and  stars;  of  the  warm  nearness  and  friendliness  of 
the  moon  in  opposition  to  its  wintry  cold  remoteness ;  of  the  water-life  in 
skiffs  and  yachts,  in  the  surf  and  on  lily  ponds — of  all  the  prodigality  of  air 
and  sunshine.  And  we  do  not  wonder  that  in  all  the  myriads  of  human  be- 
ings no  one  has  ever  pictured  heaven  as  any  place  of  rugs  and  lamps  and 
fires,  or  as  anything  but  a  land  of  everlasting  summer. 

We  make  the  most  of  winter;  we  are  happy  in  it;  we  see  an  immensity 
•of  beauty  in  its  vivid  contrasts  of  sparkling  snow  and  azure,  its  web-like  trac- 
ery of  bare  boughs  and  purple  sprays,  its  frost-ferns  on  the  frozen  pane;  its 
ice  blocks  riven  by  restless  tides,  its  white  whirl  of  storms,  and  we  think  of 
the  round  earth  then  as  a  winged  dazzle  among  the  stars.  But  when  we  have 
admired  our  most,  we  can  never  make  any  idealization  of  it  into  a  heavenly 
state,  but  the  majority  of  us,  on  the  contrary,  agree  with  Dante's  ideas  in 
making  ice  and  snow  and  freezing  blasts  the  inner  circle  and  pivotal  point  of 
the  last  place  of  punishment.  Yet  for  all  that  what  a  singular  charm  there  is 
about  the  first  fire  of  wood  laid  on  the  hearth,  herald  as  it  is  of  the  cold  im- 
prisonment, laid  there  not  any  more  for  its  heat  than  for  its  necromantic 
power  of  dispelling  gloom  when  the  weather  begins  to  shiver,  and  its  depres- 
sion begins  to  overcome  ourselves.  How  we  welcome  it,  as  if  it  were  an  old 
friend  long  gone  and  just  returned!  How  we  gather  about  it,  and  rejoice  in 
it !  How  late  we  linger  about  it,  how  we  open  our  hearts  over  it,  as  if 
thoughts  and  feelings  were  thawed  out  by  its  genial  spell!  and  how  heedlessly 
we  assist,  as  its  sacrificial  flames  wallow  up  the  chimney,  at  the  funeral  rites 
of  summer!  -  Still  after  all,  that  first  fire,  tumbling  wave  over  wave  up  and 


242 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


•ut  into  the  darkness,  is  the  concentrated  essence  of  the  spice  and  sweetness 
of  what  countless  summers!  What  years  of  sunshine  and  dew  have  gone  to 
the  growth  of  the  wood  whose  embers  crumble  from  the  andirons  as  we  bend 
over  them !  The  spirit  and  being  of  how  many  mornings  of  brightness  afe 
condensed  there  in  stem  and  branch,  and  of  what  moon-lighted  evenings! 
what  red  sunrises  have  glistened  in  the  dark  dew  that  fed  it!  what  bird-song 
has  measured  the  rhythm  of  its  increase!  what  gentle  evening  winds  have 
swayed  it!  what  lovers  have  leaned  against  it!  what  storms  have  bowed  and 
bent  it!  And  as  it  burns  before  us  and  drops  away  into  white  ashes,  what 
comprehension  and  memory  of  all  this  sparkle  in  every  fresh  burst  of  flame, 
in  every  dying  coal,  and  diffuse  themselves  about  us,  and  make  that  first 
little  autumn  fire  for  us  the  expression  and  ideal  embodiment  of  perpetual 
summer.  And  yet  greater  is  our  delight  when  it  is  the  first  fire  of  all  on. 
our  own  hearth  and  in  our  own  house. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  243 


CHAPTER  TENTH. 


The  Light  of  the  House. 

A  mother  is  a  mother  still, 
The  holiest  thing  alive. 

— Coleridge. 

Happy  he 

With  such  a  mother!  Faith  in  womankind 
Beats  with  his  blood,  and  trust  in  all  things  high 
Comes  easy  to  him.  —Tennyson. 

His  first  love?  Yes,  I  knew  her  very  well — 

Yes,  she  was  young  and  beautiful,  like  you; 
With  cheeks  rose-flushed,  and  lovely  eyes  that  fell 

If  people  praised  her  overmuch,  but  true 

And  fearless,  flashing  out  as  blue  eyes  can 
At  any  cruelty  to  beast  or  man. 

His  first  love?     Oh,  you  do  begin  to  see 

That  he  might  love  her  dearly,  and  that  yet 
His  manhood's  love  to  you  might  guerdon  be, 

Upon  your  woman's  brow  its  coronet. 

Dear  girl,  accept  the  gift.     There  is  no  other 
First  love  so  holy  as  she  gained — his  mother! 

- — Margaret  E.  Sangster. 

Her  children  arise  up  and  call  her  blessed. 

— Proverbs. 

Rock 'me  to  sleep,  mother,  rock  me  to  sleep. 

— E.  A.  Allen. 

What  will  not  woman,  gentle  woman,  dare 
When  strong  affection  stirs  her  spirit  up? 

— Southey. 

The  light  of  love,  the  purity  of  grace, 
The  mind,  the  music,  breathing  from  her  face, 
The  heart  whose  softness  harmonized  the  whole, — 
And  oh,  the  eye  was  in  itself  a  soul! 

— Byron. 

She  gave  me  eyes,  she  gave  me  ears, 
And  humble  cares,  and  delicate  fears, 
A  heart  the  fountain  of  sweet  tears 
And  love  and  thought  and  joy. 

—  Wordstvor-th. 


244  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Me,  let  the  tender  office  long  engage 
To  rock  the  cradle  of  reposing  age, 
With  lenient  arts  extend  a  mother's  breath, 
Make  languor  smile,  and  smooth  the  bed  of  death ; 
Explore  the  thought,  explain  the  asking  eye, 
And  keep  a  while  one  parent  from  the  sky. 

— Pope. 

Not  a  house  as  fine  as  Aladdin's  palace  will  give  us  the  stepping  stone  to 
happiness  that  we  have  expected  it  to  be  if  it  is  not  inhabited  by  certain  fine 
and  sweet  spirits.  And  first  of  all  these  is  the  mother.  It  is  one  of  the 
time-honored  beliefs,  old  enough,  those  observers  who  have  but  a  poor  opinion 
of  the  modern  society  mother  are  saying,  to  have  reached  a  foolish  dotage,  or  old 
enough  to  know  better,  as  you  please — that  there  is  no  love  like  mother-love, 
as  a  modern  poet  phrases  it;  and  it  is  true  in  so  far  as  it  implies  that  there 
ought  to  be  no  love  like  mother's  love ;  but  as  mothers  are  as  fallible  as  wives  and 
daughters  and  sisters,  we  too  frequently  meet  specimens  of  them  that  make  us 
think  that  if  there  is  no  love  like  mother's  love,  we  are  glad  of  it,  and  we 
should  think  that  children  would  be,  too. 


A  Mother. 

Of  course  these  observers  are  not  intending  to  deny  the  great  fact  of 
maternal  devotion,  of  the  self-sacrifice  that  bares  its  own  breast  to  protect  its 
young,  that  dies  for  it  if  need  be.  But  there  are  mothers  and  mothers,  and 
whenever  we  see  an  inherently  selfish  woman  we  see  also  one  who,  if  she  is  a 
mother,  is  of  the  sort  that,  if  there  is  any  dying  to  do,  lets  her  children  die  for 
her.  Although  occasionally  this  mother  is  of  the  description  that  makes  you 
wonder  how  she  ever  happened  to  be  chosen  to  preside  over  a  home,  usually  she 
is  the  tender  and  petted  pretty  woman,  gentle  and  sweet  and  incapable,  whose 
children  ride  over  her,  as  the  word  goes,  not  because  she  loves  them  so  that  she 
can  refuse  them  nothing,  but  because  she  loves  herself  too  much  to  undertake 
the  trouble  of  resistance,  and  without  saying  it  herself  exactly,  her  actions  say 
for  her  that  she  would  rather  the  children  came  to  grief  than  that  she  should 
be  obliged  to  make  an  exertion  or  forego  a  pleasure  to  prevent  it.  This  is  the 
mother  who  lies  at  home  reading  a  novel  while  the  nurse-girl,  fresh  to  our 
fashions  and  full  of  her  own  interests,  drags  the  baby  out  in  crowded  thorough- 
fares, often  with  its  eyes  in  the  sun,  or  just  as  often  among  horses'  heels,  with 
her  own  head  turned  the  other  way,  and  so  busy  with  her  gossips  and  flirtations 
that  the  child  might  be  stolen  under  her  hand  and  she  know  no  more  about  it 
than  the  nurse  of  the  child  who  replaced  Pomona's  baby  did ;  the  mother  who 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  245 

sits  on  the  seaside  piazza,  with  her  crewel-work  and  her  friends  while  her  child 
is  in  danger  of  drowning,  or  is  off  about  her  pleasure  while  the  servant  has  her 
children  sweltering  in  the  neighbors'  kitchens,  and  eating  whatever  they  can 
lay  their  hands  on.  When,  knowing  their  mothers'  whereabouts  and  "behavior, 
we  see  these  neglected  little  beings,  and  find  their  pulses  fevered,  their  diges- 
tion disordered,  and  their  whole  state  just  what  it  should  not  be,  we  say  to  our- 
selves that  that  mother's  children  ought  to  be  taken  away  from  her,  and  usually 
Providence  seems  of  our  way  of  thinking,  and  they  are  taken  away. 

It  is  well  for  one's  opinion  of  one's  own  race  that  there  is  another  sort  of 
mother  in  the  world — mothers  whose  lives,  unlike  those  of  such  cuckoo  moth- 
ers, resemble  more  the  lives  of  the  domestic  hens,  lives  which  are  one  long  act 
of  maternity.  It  is  fortunate  that  one  can  remember  the  self-forgetfulness  of 
one's  own  mother,  listen  believingly  to  the  story  of  the  sacrifices  of  one's  hus- 
band's mother,  see  daily  the  argus-eyed  care  of  one's  wife's  mother,  feel  sure 
that  no  dumb  creature  ever  excelled  in  watchful  provision  the  efforts  of  one's 
friend's  mother,  remember  the  great  mothers  in  history,  and  not  suffer  the 
selfish  short-comings  of  this  incapable  and  worse  than  worthless  mother  to 
outweigh  them  all. 


The  Ideal  Mother. 

There  are  mothers  in  the  world  who  feel  that  they  are  responsible  for  the 
sprits  called  from  the  vasty  deep  and  for  the  bodies  that  clothe  them,  who 
do  not  know  how  to  rest  unless  every  condition  of  health  and  safety  has  been 
fulfilled.  They  would  scorn  the  suggestion  of  the  shiftless  mother  who  takes 
no  pains  because  she  may  have  no  thanks,  for  to  them  the  thanks  are  in  the 
deed,  the  reward  is  in  the  doing;  they  would  be  wretched  if  they  failed  to  do, 
and  they  are  happy  in  their  endeavor.  What  an  amount  of  good  is  it  that  these 
mothers  render  the  world !  To  them  more  than  to  any  other  single  and  separate 
influence  is  due  the  health  that  follows  the  race  up  out  of  savagery,  and  attends 
it  perhaps  to  unguessed  development  of  strength ;  and  to  them — their  hands 
upheld  doubtless  as  the  prophet's  were  on  the  mountain,  by  the  help  they 
have — is  largely  due  that  improved  moral  excellence,  to  prove  the  reality  of 
which,  if  casuists  deny  its  existence,  one  needs  only  to  point  to  the  difference  in 
public  and  private  life  between  the  mass  of  people  in  the  nineteenth  and  that  of 
the  fifteenth,  the  thirteenth  and  the  eleventh  centuries,  and  as  much  farther  back 
as  undoubted  history  can  take  us.  And  if  the  development  of  the  brain  of  the 
race  is  not  directly  due  to  these  or  any  mothers,  it  is,  at  any  rate,  to  their 
watchful  help  that  it  owes  the  opportunity  of  development.  For  oftener  thani 
any  one  else  it  is  the  mother  who  spells  out  the  lessons  with  the  child,  even  aftejtr 


246  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

it  has  escaped  her  tutelage,  and  is  in  the  hands  of  masters,  up  betimes  in  the 
morning,  and  bending  over  the  book  in  the  evening.  It  is  she  who  denies  her- 
self the  money,  that  the  price  of  the  education  may  be  had,  and  the  clothes  for 
pride  or  for  decency,  if  there  is  any  denial  to  be  done ;  and  she  who  by  her  own 
exertion  spares  the  tired  little  student  in  every  way  when  studies  and  classes  are 
over  for  the  day;  and  it  is  she  who  fires  the  ambition  and  fans  it  with  daily  and 
hourly  breath;  and  she  who  looks  out  for  the  play-time  and  pleasure  between 
the  tasks.  Yet  we  would  not  take  any  credit  from  the  fathers  in  allowing  so 
much  to  these  mothers  who  are  mothers  and  fulfill  their  destiny.  In  the  greater 
number  of  cases  where  there  are  such  mothers  there  are  fathers  who  encourage 
them  by  leaving  no  duty  undone  on  their  part,  wise  men  who  know  how  to 
choose  wise  women  to  wife,  and  whose  exactions  do  not  make  life  so  hard  to 
them  as  wives  that  they  have  no  heart  to  do  their  work  as  mothers.  These  are 
the  mothers  whose  love  there  is  no  other  love  to  equal ;  and  it  will  never  be 
from  them,  or  from  any  like  them,  that  radical  disturbers  of  the  peace 
will  talk  of  taking  their  children  to  be  reared  by  the  State ,  thinking  that  even 
the  artificial  mother,  like  the  false  incubator  of  the  barn-yard  family,  is  better 
than  the  mother  who  neither  broods  her  young  nor  scratches  for  them. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  sentimental  cant,  one  must  allow,  in  the  com- 
mon talk  about  the  beauty  and  glory  of  motherhood,  but  veryjittle  practical 
appreciation  of  that  beauty  and  glory  among  the  talkers.  The  accepted  formu- 
las would  lead  one  to  believe  that  the  whole  thing  was  a  mere  exhibition  and 
enjoyment  of  loveliness  and  tenderness,  without  responsibility,  or  work,  or 
weariness ;  without  a  moment  of  terror,  or  agony,  or  despair.  Art  ha"s  so  far 
taken  up  the  fancy  and  helped  it  forward  that  its  perpetual  presentation  of 
motherhood  is  either  the  blissful  young  being  aureoled  with  happiness,  and 
holding  her  baby  in  her  arms,  or  else  the  saintly  old  woman  who,  with  her  silver 
hair  and  serene  smile,  sits  down  for  a  placid  breathing  space  at  the  end  of  he'r 
labors. 

But  with  the  intermediate  mother,  the  real  mother,  the  mother  of  many 
cares,  of  constant  effort,  of  daily  and  nightly  anxieties,  neither  Art  nor  Poetry 
occupies  itself;  and  though  her  children  may  some  day  rise  up  and  call  her 
blessed,  yet  for  long  and  weary  years  her  virtue  is  its  own  reward. 

Indeed,  there  is  little  about  her  that  is  picturesque  enough  for  the  painter 
or  the  singer  to  use.  The  heavenly  Madonna  smiling  from  the  canvas,  all 
calmness  and  strength  and  joy,  is  available  as  the  image  of  utter  perfection  in 
the  idea;  the  daily  drudge  attending  to  prosaic  duties  and  relieving  ignoble 
wants,  is  not  sufficiently  gilded  by  the  beauty  of  her  self-denial  and  her  love  to 
give  her  the  conditions  that  pen  and  pencil  find  desirable  and  requisite ;  she  is, 
in  point  of  verity,  too  near  and  too  commonplace  for  Art.  For  the  young 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  247 

mother  with  her  baby,  the  old  mother  with  her  accomplished  life,  have,  so  to 
speak,  a  sort  of  aerial  perspective,  as  if  the  one  were  an  object  among  the 
dreams  of  the  future,  the  other  among  the  memories  of  the  past.  The  present 
is  seldom  poetic;  it  is  only  when  leagues  of  blue  and  misty  distance  intervene 
that  the  hard,  bare  path  we  climb  to-day  becomes  the  vision  of  a  beautiful  and 
ideal  ascent  into  heaven. 


The  Every-Day  Mother. 

And  yet  this  artistic  beauty  is  a  merely  superficial  one.  The  true  beauty 
lies  with  the  commonplace  mother — the  mother  who  not  once  in  ten  thousand 
instances  fails  in  the  fulfillment  oc  all  that  routine,  so  seldom  estimated  at  its 
worth  when  performed,  so  surely  bringing  condemnation  if  in  any  iota 
neglected.  The  true  beauty,  we  repeat,  is  with  this  mother  who  rises  in  the 
middle  of  the  night  to  see  if  her  children  are  covered ;  who  springs  from  warm 
and  comfortable  and  needed  rest  at  the  hoarse  breath  or  the  restless  toss;  who 
lies  awake  plotting  and  planning,  in  these  early  years,  how  to  get  two  articles 
of  dress  out  of  the  cloth  meant  for  one — in  those  later  years,  how  to  divine  the 
bent  of  this  child's  genius,  of  that  child's  inclinations;  who  perhaps  kindles  the 
fires,  perhaps  prepares  the  breakfast,  certainly  sees  the  children  contentedly  off 
to  school ;  who  toils  and  moils  all  day  long,  endeavoring  to  have  the  home  what 
it  is  desirable  it  should  be  for  husband  and  children ;  measuring  this  way  and 
that  to  make  both  ends  meet;  never  glancing  aside  at  the  enticing  romance; 
forbidding  her  feet  to  follow  the  pleasant  path  to  some  neighbor's  gossipy  fire- 
side ;  denying  herself  sometimes  necessaries  in  order  that  her  children  may  have 
luxuries;  foregoing  social  outside  pleasure  that  the  evening  lamp  may  always 
be  trimmed  and  burning,  and  the  best-loved  spirit  of  the  bright  fireside  never 
wanting;  bearing  her  pains  and  her  sorrows  with  silent  composure,  that  no 
thought  of  them  may  darken  the  young  lives  about  her,  and  when  all  is  done, 
and  while  all  is  doing,  finding  perfect  recompense  in  the  happiness  afforded  by 
the  opportunity  of  the  sacrifice  and  devotion. 

The  compensation  seems  to  come  to  every  real  mother  in  every  moment. 
She  forgets  her  suffering  from  the  first  in  the  joy  of  her  possession ;  and  as  the 
bird  strips  her  breast  of  down  to  warm  the  nest  for  her  young,  so  there  is 
no  self-abnegation  that  is  too  great  for  a  mother  to  make,  and  none  that  does 
not  bring  with  it  a  satisfying  joy. 

"  Wearie  is  the  mither  that  has  a  stone  wean, 
A  wee  stumpie  stoussie  that  canna  rin  his  lane, 
That  has  a  battle  aye  \vi'  sleep  before  he'll  close  an  ee — 
But  a  kiss  f rae  aff  his  rosy  lips  gies  strength  anew  to  me  !" 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


MOTHER  S   DEVOTION. 

It  will  only  be  when  we  understand,  in  gazing  on  tbe  beautiful  picture  of 
the  young  mother,  that  she  is  so  lovely  because  all  this  exertion  and  devotion 
and  sacrifice  are  before  her,  in  gazing  at  the  old  one,  that  she  is  so  saintly  be- 
cause trial  and  labor  and  love  have  refined  her  in  their  furnaces,  that  our  talk 
about  the  beauty  of  maternity  and  the  sacred  name  of  mother  will  cease  to  be 
poetical  cant  and  become  realized  truth. 


The  Story  of  Old  Margaret  and  Her  Boy. 

Let  me  tell  you  the  story  of  Old   Margaret,  who  was  one  of  the  self-for- 
getting mothers. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  249 

There  are  certain  feminine  instincts  that  assume  in  many  eyes  the  charac- 
ter rather  of  virtues  than  of  instincts,  and  the  manifestation  of  which  in  any 
individual  seems  to  touch  all  other  women  neatly. 

Among  these  instincts,  so  to  call  them,  is  that  maternal  one  which  causes 
the  year-old  baby  to  hold  her  mother's  needle-book  or  roll  of  work  on  her  little 
breast  and  hush  it  off  to  sleep,  which  causes  her  half  a  dozen  years  afterward 
to  wake  up  in  the  night  and  see  if  her  doll  is  warm  enough,  and  which,  a  score 
of  years  later  yet,  knits  a  tie  between  herself  and  every  tender  little  child  she 
sees.  A  strange  tie,  without  the  immense  joy  of  a  mother's  love — that  joy 
which  overflows  the  inner  cells  of  the  most  desolate  heart  with  vital  warmth, 
which  is  fulfilled  with  satisfaction  and  with  that  ineffable  yearning  where  earth, 
touches  close  on  heaven — a  barren  tie  beside  that  divinely  complete  thing,  and 
with  more  pain  than  pleasure  in  it.  It  is  as  if  the  bitter  lot  of  women  in  this 
world  caused  them  to  feel  the  pathos  of  the  fate  of  every  child  born  into  it, 
and  gave  them  a  pity  that  is  all  but  love.  "Little  butterfly  in  the  cunshine 
and  among  the  flowers,"  it  seems  to  say,  "  by-and-by  night  is  coming,  darkness 
and  heavy  dew  and  the  night-hawk.  If  only  I  could  protect  you !  " 

Whenever  I  used  to  see  a  little  bent  old  woman  go  by  my  window  with  a 
child  in  her  arms,  these  and  kindred  thoughts  would  follow  her.  I  did  not  know 
her  name,  and  I  could  not  see  her  face;  but  she  interested  me  far  more  than 
the  bright-cheeked  and  golded-haired  young  creatures  that  tripped  by  on  their 
way  from  the  finishing  school.  Her  clean  but  utterly  faded  calico  was  so  short 
that  it  showed  the  clumsy  village-ties  and  drab  stockings  of  her  knobby  and 
rheumatic  feet ;  her  shawl  was  a  threadbare  black  blanket:  her  bonnet  was  a 
rusty  poke;  an  alpaca  apron  was  her  only  vanity;  her  poor  old  hands  were  bare 
and  bony  and  misshapen,  but  they  seemed  to  me  fairer  than  any  idle  lady's  in 
the  land  when  I  saw  the  way  in  which  they  clasped  the  child  she  held;  the  way 
in  which,  as  she  walked, 'she  used  to  pause  and  lift  the  child  higher,  and  lay  the 
little  face  against  her  own,  and  step  off  again  as  if  she  were  young  and  happy. 
Day  by  day  I  saw  her  pass.  As  the  child  grew,  and  sat  up  in  her  arms  and 
looked  about,  she  would  straighten  her  bent  form  to  bear  him  more  erectly. 
Often  she  would  kiss  him  rapturously  as  she  went  along,  and  she  was  always 
crooning  some  low  tune  to  him,  or  talking  a  loving  gibberish  that  he  seemed  to 
understand.  Evidently  the  child  had  no  mother,  perhaps  no  father,  either, 
for  he  was  clothed  in  odds  and  ends;  a  great  sacque  and  hood  wrapped  him  for 
a  long  time,  and  when  the  spring  came  his  head  emerged  with  the  short  yellow 
curls  crowned  by  a  hat  that  seemed  to  delight  him,  so  often  he  tore  it  off  with 
his  little  hands  to  look  at  it,  and  set  it  on  again  awry,  but  which  she  must  have 
rescued  from  an  ash-barrel,  and  have  scoured  and  trimmed  with  scraps  of 
cambric  from  her  rag  bag.  I  longed  to  ask  them  in  while  they  were  slowly 


TTIXG    AND   PLAYING   HI.3  BANJO. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  251 

going  by;  but  I  have  an  uncomfortable  reverence  for  reserves,  and  I  fancied 
she  was  one  of  those  who  had  rather  suffer  than  be  seen  to  suffer.  But  when 
the  baby  grew  so  heavy  that  she  had  to  rest  every  little  while,  she  sat  down  one 
•day  on  my  garden  step,  and  then  I  opened  the  door  to  go  out,  and  stopped  and 
made  friends  with  the  child,  and  gave  him  a  cup  of  milk  and  a  cake,  and  began 
with  her  an  acquaintance  which  if  I  do  not  in  another  life  resume,  it  will  be 
because  I  am  not  fit. 

Years  and  years  ago  old  Margaret  Ewins  had  been  young;  it  seems  as 
though  no  one  could  guess  the  fact  were  it  not  plainly  stated,  so  gray  and 
wrinkled  and  seamed  was  the  face  with  which  she  looked  up  at  you.  "Years 
and  years  ago,"  she  said  once.  "It's  hard  to  believe  it  now  when  you  see  me, 
child ;  but  every  wrinkle  is  a  care,  and  every  furrow  is  a  tear.  There  were  no 
wrinkles  norfurrows,  no  cares  nor  tears — it  was  all  fresh  and  blooming — when 
I  married  Stephen." 

When  she  married  Stephen !  That  was  full  forty  years  ago.  And  thirty 
years  he  had  been  under  the  sod.  Doubtless  his  image  had  grown  dimmer 
than  once,  but  he  was  still  to  her  the  fine  and  noble  fellow  that  won  her  heart. 
She  forgot  that  she  was  a  withered  crone,  that  he  was  a  handful  of  dust;  she 
set  her  love  beside  his  inmortal  youth,  and  looked  forward  to  the  end. 

Stephen  had  left  her  with  an  only  child,  born  on  the  day  he  died.  Other  chil- 
dren had  come  and  been  laid  away  before,  but  this  girl  was  last  and  the  dearest 
of  all.  In  her  the  father  seemed  to  live  and  breathe  again ;  for  her  the  mother 
lived  indeed.  She  was  a  pretty  thing  as  she  grew  into  womanhood.  Perhaps 
her  mind  was  not  altogether  of  the  strongest;  but  one  would  have  to  be  fastid- 
ious who  paused  to  think  of  that  in  gazing  at  the  red  and  white  of  her  face,  the 
clear  blue  of  her  great  eyes,  the  gilding  of  her  chestnut  hair,  her  sweet  and 
innocent  mouth.  Of  course  she  had  lovers,  and  of  course  there  was  a  favored 
one — the  least  deserving  of  the  whole,  but  the  son  of  a  family  of  vastly  superior 
circumstances  to  her  own. 

For  poor  Bessie's  circumstances  were  those  which  belong  to  the  children  of 
poverty  and  labor  the  world  over.  Her  mother  owned  the  little  house  in  which 
they  lived,  and  the  larger  part  of  which  they  rented  to  others ;  and  for  the  rest 
they  did  sewing,  nursing,  clear-starching,  whatever  came  to  hand.  But  needy 
as  they  were,  Bessie  always  had  on  a  clean  print  dress,  though  she  had  to  rise 
before  day  to  wash  and  iron  it;  she  always  had  a  bright  ribbon  for  her  throat; 
she  always  looked  as  perfect  as  a  rose. 

And  old  Margaret's  pride  and  joy  lay  in  seeing  her  so.  She  wore  her  own 
brown  gingham  till  it  fell  apart,  so  that  Bessie  might  have  a  bishop's  lawn  for 
sumjmer  Sundays.  She  pretended  dire  dyspepsias,  and  lived  on  crusts  so  that 
Bessie  might  keep  her  b'ood  sweet  and  rich  with  the  little  milk  and  meat  there 


252  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

was.  Long  after  Bessie  had  come  home  from  her  moon-lit  stroll  with  the  hand- 
some and  worthless  James  Falconer,  Margaret  sat  over  her  needle  or  her  Ital- 
ian irons  abridging  the  morrow's  work,  that  Bessie's  pretty  shoulders  might 
learn  no  stoop,  or  else  turning  an  extra  penny,  that  she  might  surprise  Bessie 
with  the  bit  of  trimming:  for  which  she  had  heard  the  girl  longing.  Poor  Mar- 
garet i  she  little  knew  the  crop  she  sowed,  nor  recognized  the  tact  that  Bessie 
was  becoming  to  herself  as  well  as  to  her  mother  the  chief  person  in  the  drama  -f 
she  failed  to  see  the  springing  and  ripening  selfishness  in  the  girl,  the  wilful 
spirit,  the  deadly  love  of  finery,  the  lack  of  reason.  She  only  saw  her  standing 
in  the  light  and  looking  at  her  with  her  father's  eyes — those  burning  blue  eyes 
that  seemed  at  once  to  revel  in  the  brilliance  of  the  world  and  scorn  it,  too— and 
she  felt  that  all  she  could  have  was  not  too  much  for  her. 

Still  as  she  glanced  from  the  window  sometimes,  and  saw  her  by  moonbeam 
or  star  gleam  leaning  against  the  gate  post,  with  James  Falconer  across  the 
little  wicket,  as  tall  and  dark  and  glittering  as  Lucifer,  a  misgiving  would  cross 
Margaret  as  to  whether  she  was  right  in  letting  the  thing  go  on;  as  to  whether 
it  was  possible  for  young  Falconer  to  stoop  from  his  ancient  degree  and  his 
father's  place  to  marry  this  clear-starcher.  But  then  the  child  looked  so  bright 
and  rosy  and  lovely  as  her  mother  gazed  at  her  that  she  could  but  fold  her 
hands  above  her  beating  heart  and  whisper  to  herself  that  all  might  be  for  the 
best,  for  stranger  things  than  that  had  happened. 

But  the  years  went  slowly  wearing  by,  each  one  of  them  taking  a  degree 
of  Bessie's  bloom  with  it,  and  Bessie  was  old  enough  to  know  better,  and  still 
James  Falconer  followed  her  and  did  not  marry  her,  and  other  lovers  had  fallen 
away,  and  the  mother,  through  some  hidden  sense,  was  half  aware  that  Bessie's 
name  was  spoken  lightly.  And  one  day  Falconer  had  disappeared,  leaving  a 
defalcation  behind  him,  and  Bessie  had  gone,  too. 

No  search  was  made  for  the  defaulter  ;  a  little  of  his  father's  wealth  could 
repair  the  breach  in  the  bank,  and  for  his  father's  sake  no  suit  was  entered 
against  him.  Indeed,  there  were  those  who  half  excused  him,  and  laid  the 
blame  on  the  shameless  girl  who  had  allured  him,  as  they  said,  to  his  ruin. 
And  certainly  no  search  was  made  for  Bessie.  What  could  one  feeble  little  old 
woman  do  ?  Nothing  in  the  world,  nothing  but  pray — pray  over  seam  and 
stove,  by  day  and  night!  "What  am  I  crying  for?  "  she  would  say,  dashing 
away  her  tears.  "  God  is  on  my  side,  and  with  Him  on  my  side,  am  I  going 
to  lose?  No;  Bessie  will  come  back  to  me." 

And  so  for  five  years  she  toiled  and  moiled,  not  for  herself,  but  that  when 
Bessie  came  home  there  might  be  something  laid  by  to  let  rest  and  comfort 
greet  her.  And  every  night  she  swept  the  hearth  and  brightened  the  lamp  for 
her,  and  every  morning  she  made  the  place  spotless,  thinking  it  might  hold 


STEPPING    STONES    TO    HAPPINESS. 


253 


Bessie  before  night.  And  her  eyes  longed  and  her  heart  ached  and  ber  hands 
trembled  to  see  her.  Her  expectation  was  always  at  fever  heat.  She  hardly 
knew  that  the  tears  wet  her  pillow  at  night,  such  comfort  was  there  in  the 
thought  that  Bessie  might  come  to-morrow. 

Five  long,  lonesome  years!  If  old  Margaret  were  sick,  there  was  no  one  to 
soothe  her;  if  she  was  cast  down,  there  was  no  one  to  cheer  her.  But  she 
clasped  a  sure  faith;  her  hope  brightened  her  days;  and  one  night,  as  she  had 
forefelt,  Bessie  came  home,  A  weary  woman  got  down  from  the  stage,  and 
tottered  up  the  yard,  and  came  in,  and  fell  upon  the  floor,  and  in  the  night 
Tier  boy  was  born,  and  in  the  morning  consciousness  seemed  to  come  back  an 
instant;  for  she  looked  up  into  her  mother's  face  with  those  blue  eyes  and 
half  smiled— Margaret  always  said  it  was  a  smile — and  died;  and  all  without 
one  word '.  without  a  word !  And  if  she  could  but  have  spoken — for  there  was 
no  ring  on  her  finger. 

Five  long  and  lonesome  years — and  just  for  this!  Poor  Margaret  had  no 
tears.  A  fierce,  dry  anger  with  fate  burned  them  away  at  their  source  Now, 
indeed,  she  was  wretched.  In  those  five  years  she  saw  she  had  been  happy- 
happy  with  her  hope.  She  took  the  child  and  cared  for  it  mechanically;  she 
laid  it  down  between  whiles  as  she  went  about  her  work,  and  suffered  it  to  cry 
if  it  would.  "Let  it  cry!"che  said.  "It's  James  Falconer's  child.  Crying's 
too  good  for  it."  But  once  as  the  little  thing  was  sobbing,  she  went  to  it  and 
saw  the  great  tears  shining  in  its  blue  eyes.  "Ah,  it  is  Bessie's  child!  "  she 
cried.  "  I  have  been  a  cruel  wretch ! <1  and  she  caught  it  up  and  warmed  it  at 
lier  heart,  and  anger  and  grief  went  together;  and  thenceforth  she  was  bound 
in  the  child.  "I  would  have  treated  an  outcast  better,"  she  sobbed  at  last. 
"Ah,  my  poor  little  lad,  with  such  a  life  before 
Mm!" 

And  so  she  lived  and  strived,  and  had  no  other 
end  in  view  than  the  well-being  of  little  Steve,  as 
she  had  named  him.  For  him  now  she  sat  up  at  night, 


254  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

as  she  had  sat  up  for  his  mother;  for  him  she  denied  herself  as  of  old.  That 
came  natural  enough.  It  seemed  to  her,  she  said  to  herself,  as  if  she  were 
doing  still  for  Bessie.  All  she  had  laid  by  during  the  five  years  went  in  Bessie's 
burial.  Anxious  to  have  something  beforehand  again  in  case  of  her  own  illness, 
or  in  preparation  for  little  Steve's  future  jacket  and  trousers,  or  schooling,  she 
spared  herself  no  pains.  Her  eyesight  had  failed  so,  what  with  years  and  what 
with  tears,  that  she  could  no  longer  do  fine  sewing  or  starching.  She  was. 
obliged  to  go  out  to  the  rougher  labor  of  the  tub,  and  another  old  woman  from 
the  other  part  of  the  house: — too  old,  indeed,  for  anything  but  to  hinder  the 
baby  from  rolling  off  the  bed — used  to  come  in  and  keep  watch  for  her  while 
her  poor  old  arms  were  in  the  suds.  But  people  hardly  liked  to  employ  her, 
not  only  because  she  could  not  see  well,  but  because  it  seemed  as  if  they  had 
better  be  doing  the  work  themselves  than  imposing  it  upon  that  gray-headed 
woman.  Her  proud,  keen  spirit  felt  that  it  was  more  in  charity  than  anything 
else  that  she  was  hired  at  all.  And  she  hailed  the  fact,  as  if  a  miracle  had  been 
wrought  in  her  behalf  when  rents  grew  so  dear  in  the  town  that  she  was  at 
liberty  to  receive  twenty-five  dollars  more  a  year  on  the  other  part  of  her  little 
house,  of  which  she  now  reserved  but  one  room  and  a  closet  for  herself,  and  so 
was  allowed  to  leave  the  wash  tub. 

Thus  on  one  hundred  dollars  a  year  old  Margaret  lived  and  reared  her  child. 
It  is  that  which  seems  the  miracle  to  you;  but  her  wants  were  very  few,  and 
she  was  not  uncomfortable.  She  asked  no  aid  of  any  for  little  Steve  — least 
of  all  of  the  Falconers,  who  never  knew  from  her  that  such  a  child  existed. 
Her  bread  and  milk  was  all  he  wanted  as  yet,  and  he  wore,  as  I  have  said,  almost 
anything  The  Old  Ladies'  Society  of  the  town  gave  her  a  monthly  allowance 
of  good  Oolong  tea,  and  she  accepted  it  as  a  public  benefit  of  the  same  nature 
as  the  streets  to  walk  on ,  or  the  use  of  the  corner  pump,  or  the  ringing  of  the 
nine-o'clock  bell,  to  none  of  which  she  contributed  tax  money.  And  now, 
with  nothing  to  do  but  to  keep  her  two  rooms  and  her  two  people  clean,  to- 
teach  little  Steve  his  first  steps  and  first  words,  she  abandoned  herself  to  her 
first  real  bliss  in  years,  and  when  I  was  pitying  her  most  she  was  needing  it 
least.  Her  first  real  bliss,  for  not  a  fear  disturbed  it.  "  God  takes  care  of 
the  sparrows,"  she  would  say.  "  And  he  will  take  care  of  little  Steve." 

"  But  when  he  is  bigger,"  croaked  the  old  grandam  from  the  other  part  of 
the  house,  nearly  as  fond  herself  of  the  boy  as  Margaret  was,  though  quite 
disapproving  Margaret's  devotion,  "he  will  want  different  food  from  your 
bread  and  milk.  He  will  need  red  meat,  and  where  is  he  to  get  it  ? " 

"  Where  the  young  lions  get  theirs,"  said  Margaret,  and  went  on  joyously; 
and  it  was  in  the  days  that  I  first  saw  her,  taking  her  morning  and  her  afternoon 
walk  with  the  child  in  her  arms,  talking  gayly  to  him  all  the  time,  and  kissing; 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  255 

him  at  every  other  step.  What  visions  she  had  of  little  Steve's  future,  and 
how  she  used  to  confide  them  to  the  child  as  they  went !  And  the  boy  would 
lift  his  little  head  and  pat  her  cheek  approvingly,  as  if  he  understood  them  all, 
and  give  her  now  and  then  a  great  wet  kiss  of  his  rosy  mouth  in  return— 
a  kiss  that  knew  no  difference  between  her  shriveled  vellow  cheek  and 
the  blushing  velvet  of  youth. 

How,  after  her  hard  experience  of  life  Margaret  could  have  had  such  a  thing 
as  a  vision  passes  conjecture;  but  she  was  so  light-hearted  in  her  love  that  she 
believed  in  everything  that  another  might  have  seen  to  be  impossible  and 
unattainable.  The  clothes  which  little  Steve  was  to  wear  when  he  went  to 
school;  the  errands  he  was  to  run  in  order  to  get  the  money  to  buy  the  clothes; 
the  school  to  which  he  was  to  go — no  common  school  at  all,  but  one  where  her 
care  of  the  rooms  was  to  balance  his  term  bill;  the  prizes  he  was  to  win;  the 
day  he  was  to  graduate  and  speak  his  piece,  and  be  applauded  by  the  people 
and  be  mentioned  in  the  Morning  Herald  next  day;  the  apprenticeship  he  was 
to  serve  in  a  lawyer's  office ;  the  cases  he  was  some  day  to  plead ;  the  lives  he 
then  was  to  save ;  the  good,  the  glory ;  and  by-and-by  President — what  a  daz- 
zling structure  that  she  built  up  on  the  foundation  of  her  little  span  of  life  and 
strength  !  And  meanwhile,  as  she  waited  for  the  time  when  all  these  things 
should  be  accomplishing,  she  took  her  pleasure  in  her  boy. 

Perhaps  Bessie's  babyhood  had  been  as  lovely,  her  tongue  as  apt,  her  feel- 
ings as  quick,  as  little  Steve's  were  now;  but  Margaret  had  had  no  time  then 
to  enjoy  any  of  it  all — now  she  had  nothing  else  to  do.  It  seemed  to  her  that 
no  cherub  -slumbering  in  beds  of  amaranth  and  asphodel  inside  the  sculptured 
gates  of  heaven  could  be  so  beautiful  as  little  Steve  was  with  the  dew  of  sleep 
upon  him  as  he  lay  on  the  old  patchwork  quilt.  The  day  that  the  boy  laughed 
heartily  and  intelligently  she  felt  that  she  had  assisted  at  a  fresh  creation  of  the 
human  soul,  and  to  her  mind  nothing  more  remarkable  in  the  record  of  the  race 
had  ever  occurred  than  the  first  articulate  sound  that  little  Steve  uttered.  His 
recognition  of  herself  was  an  ever-recurring  miracle;  she  snatched  him  up  each 
time  and  covered  him  with  kisses,  as  if  it  needed  a  special  act  of  gratitude  ;  the 
detestable  old  cat  from  whose  back  he  pulled  a  handful  of  hair  became  a  sacred 
being — she  wondered  that  the  cat  did  not  like  it;  he  was  welcome  to  as  many 
handfuls  of  her  gray  hair  as  he  would  take  !  "  Do  not  talk  about  this  earth's 
being  a  dark  place  ! "  she  cried,  to  the  old  grandam  of  the  other  part  of  the 
house,  "  for  it  seems  to  me  as  bright  as  the  sun  itself!  It  must  be  bright 
when  all  the  children  that  are  born  meet  it  with  such  a  gay  heart.  I  used  to 
pity  them  all.  But  now — look  at  him !  he  smiles  at  everybody,  all  the  world  are 
friends  —it  is  beautiful  !  The  angels  must  feel  just  so.  Oh,  you  don't  think, 
do  you,  that  he  is  too  bright  and  good  to  live  ?  Oh,  my  darling  !  "  she  would 


<256) 


PRACTICING   FOR   A    LONG   MIGRATION. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  257 

cry,  that  single  gleam  of  trouble  bringing  back  the  one  dark  thought  of  her  life, 
"  if  I  only  knew  that  you  had  a  right  to  the  name  you  bear  !  " 

And  so  the  days  passed  on,  each  one  a  festival,  each  new  one  bringing  a 
new  feat  of  little  Steve's  to  be  shown  and  admired  and  praised,  the  child  thrived 
and  prospered,  and  more  and  more  with  each  day  the  little  old  woman  seemed 
to  become  a  child  with  him.  They  used  often  now  to  come  in  and  see  me.  I 
had  the  children's  deserted  toys  for  little  Steve,  that  delighted  him,  and  there 
were  others  which  could  not  be  taken  away,  sucn  as  the  great  music  box,  and 
the  aquarium,  and  the  fernery,  over  which  he  hung  spell-bound,  and  I  had  cer- 
tain innocent  dainties  whose  whereabouts  he  early  learned  to  know ;  and  when 
he  twisted  his  little  lips  into  coaxing  kisses  on  the  air  between,  his  grandmother, 
proud  as  she  was,  could  not  resist  the  child's  insistence  to  be  brought  across  the 
street  to  me. 

The  sight  of  age  is  always  a  pathetic  sight  to  the  young  and  strong, 
especially  of  age  forgetting  its  miseries  and  the  near  grave  in  the  love  of 
others ;  but  there  was  something  exquisitely  pathetic  in  the  sight  of  this  little 
old  creature  lugging  the  heavy  child  about,  none  the  less  so  for  her  uncon- 
sciousness of  it.  Once,  when  she  saw  a  shadow  of  the  thought  on  my  face, 
"  Don't  you  pity  me,'*  she  cried;  "  I  am  too  happy  for  that!  Keep  your  pity 
for  the  old  women  that  are  not  grandmothers !  " 

"You  set  too  much  by  the  boy,  Margaret,"  said  the  grandam,  who  had 

walked  out  with  her  that  morning.     <(  What  if  he  should  be  taken  from  you  ? " 

"  What  if  he  should  be  taken  from  me  ?  "  she  repeated,  opening  her  sunken 

eyes  as  if  they  had  never  seen  the  possibility  before.    "  Well,  then,  I  should  go, 

too!     It  couldn't  be  for  long.     But  no,  no;  he  is  as  stout  and  healthy  as  he  is 

bright  and  handsome.    I  only  pray  not  to  be  taken  myself  till  he  can  spare  me !" 

Poor  old  Margaret !  It  was  well  for  her  that  she  enjoyed  herself  while  the 

sun  shone,  for  the  darkness  was  coming  soon  enough. 

One  day,  just  as  little  Steve  came  out  of  his  bath,  and,  running  away  from 
her,  was  toddling  about  the  room,  his  little  body  shining  with  water-drops,  his 
curls  dripping  in  wet,  bright  rings,  there  was  heard  a  man's  foot  on  the  step 
and  in  the  entry,  a  rap  on  the  door,  and  the  visitor  had  come  in  unbidden  and 
stood  before  her. 

It  was  James  Falconer. 
"  I  have  come  for  my  boy,"  said  he. 

Margaret,  risen  to  fetch  the  child,  staggered  and  fell  back  upon  her  seat, 
and  caught  little  Steve  and  clutched  him  closely.  She  trembled  from  head  to 
foot;  but  she  glared  at  her  enemy  like  a  lioness  defending  her  whelp. 

"I  suppose  you  do  not  deny  that  he  is  my  child?"  said  the  visitor,  no 
longer  the  dark  and  handsome  youth,  but  a  worn  and  haggard  man. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


"  He  is  his  mother's  child,"  said  Margaret  hoarsely;  "  and  so  mine.  There 
was  no  ring  on  Bessie's  finger ! " 

Falconer  paused  a  moment  and  gazed  at  the  boy ;  and  the  boy,  full  of 
roguish  glee  and  kindliness,  looked  archly  up  at  him,  and  kissed  the  air  after 
the  pretty  fashion  that  he  had.  4t  Yes,  he  is  Bessie's  boy  fast  enough,"  said 
the  man.  "  And  he  is  mine,  too,  you  will  have  to  understand.  And  I  have 
come  to  get  him !" 

"Go  away,  James  Falconer!"  cried  Margaret,  "or  I  will  set  the  law  on 
you  1.M 

"There  is  no  law  to  set  on  me,"  he  said — "  there  is  no  law  for  me,  except 
the  law  that  gives  a  man  his  child,  born  in  honest  wedlock." 

Margaret  blanched  as  she  heard  him.  Her  heart  rose  and  sank,  and  sent 
a  pulse  over  her  in  hot  waves.  To  clear  Bessie's  name  from  stain  J  But  at  such 
a  price  I  Was  it — was  it  possible?  She  looked  at  the  vanishing  ambro-type  that, 
framed  in  its  wreath  of  dead  roses,  hung  beneath  the  clock — the  bright,  beau- 
tiful face  with  the  smile. 

"  Was  he,"  she  whispered  presently — "was  he  born  so  ?  Was  my  Bessie 
a  lawful  wife  >"  He  nodded.  "  Do  you  swear  to  it,  James  Falconer  ?  Will 
you  publish  it  in  the  Morning  Herald* "  She  ran  and  brought  her  Bible,  over 
which  she  had  sat  so  raany  a  night  spelling  out  the  big  type  that  promised 
blessings  to  the  widow  and  the  fatherless.  She  held  it  out  at  arm's  length. 
4 1 Kiss  the  book t "  she  exclaimed,  "and  swear  it  all."  James  Falconer  bent 
his  head  and  kissed  the  book.  '*  Then  you  can  take  the  boy,"  she  said.  "  But 

take  him  quickly,   before  it  breaks  my  heart  !" And  the  man  went  his 

way  with  his  own.     "  O,  Bessie,  Bessie,"  she  cried,  as  the  door  closed  and  left 
her  all  alone,  "you  bright  and  careless  girl,  what  an  awful  price  have  I  paid 

for  your  good  name  !  I  have  sold  my  little 
Steve,  his  hopes,  his  future,  his  life  and  soul, 
to  that  man — to  that  man  and  to  evil." 

That  night  the  old  grandam  fumbled  at 
Margaret's  latch  to  come  in,  according  to  her 
custom,  for  a  social  gossip  in  the  twilight — 
Margaret  did  not  answer  her.  She  opened  the 
door  and  saw  her  lying  on  the  bed. 

"I've  had  a  stroke  i"  was  all  that   Mar- 
garet said,  as  the  other  old  woman  bent  over 

her—  "  I've  had  a  stroke  " 

"God  bless  me!     The  palsy!     We'll  have 

the  doctor  here" 

"Oh,  no,  it's  not  that,"  murmured  Mar- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


259 


garet,  slowly.    "  But  just  the  heart  is  dead  within 
me." 

The  next  day  the  poor  soul  did  not  attempt  to 
rise.  She  lay  there  with  the  Morning  Herald,  in 
which  at  last  was  printed  the  day  and  date  of 
Bessie's  marriage,  nearly  seven  years  ago,  spread 
out  upon  the  pillow,  as  if  in  little  Steve's  place. 
To  them  that  would  have  ministered  to  her  she 
seemed  in  a  stupor  till  she  lifted  her  eyes,  as  wild 
and  suffering  as  those  of  a  dumb  creature  in  mor- 
tal pain.  She  did  not  listen  to  what  anybody  said; 
she  did  not  speak  herself;  she  tasted  the  nour- 
ishment that  was  brought  and  turned  away — the 

tide  of  life  was  ebbing  out,  and  she  was  letting  go  her  hold  upon  the  earth  that 
had  grown  worthless  to  her.  She  lay  in  that  half  dream,  and  whether  we  came 
in  or  out  she  neither  knew  nor  cared.  Once  only  she  spoke — sighed  rather 
than  spoke.  "That  is  right,"  she  said.  "Punish  me!  punish  me  well  for  ever 
having  dared  to  doubt  my  Bessie !" 

But  Sunday  morning,  just  as  the  great  first  flush  of  the  dawn  came  into  the 
room,  and  all  the  air  rippled  with  the  tumultuous  music  of  the  birds,  Margaret 
sat  up  in  bed,  and  looked  at  the  morning  star  sinking  back  into  the  rose  and 
glory.  It  cast  the  shadow  of  the  window  sash  in  a  long  dark  cross  upon  her 
bed.  She  glanced  at  the  shadow  and  faintly  smiled — the  brighter  light  would' 
soon  efface  the  shadow,  soon  she  would  lay  her  cross  aside!  And  the  cross1 
paled  and  faded,  and  was  gone;  and  then,  as  a  child's  voice  somewhere  in  the1 
distance  sweetly  and  shrilly  joined  the  chorus  of  the  birds,  she  shivered  and! 
her  head  fell  forward  and  dropped  upon  her  breast — and  the  dawn  came  slowly 
and  softly  up  and  shed  a  silver  splendor  round  the  poor  old  head,  and  showed 
us  that  Margaret  had  passed  into  the  fuller  day. 


26o  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS, 


CHAPTER  ELEVENTH. 


A  Weil-Spring  of  Joy. 

God's  child,  with  His  dew 
On  thy  gracious  gold  hair.  — Browning. 

The  merry  merry  lark  was  up  and  singing, 

And  the  hare  was  out  and  feeding  on  the  lea, 
And  the  merry  merry  bells  below  were  ringing, 
When  my  child's  laugh  rang  through  me. 

— Charles  Kingsley, 
• 
Happy  is  the  man  that  has  his  quiver  full  of  them. 

— Psalms. 

So  build  we  up  the  being  that  we  are. 

—  Wordsworth. 

A  mither  bairn  who  had  never  known 

Aught  save  the  tenderest  care, 
She  had  fared  to  the  heavenly  land  alone, 

As  the  souls  of  all  must  fare. 

— Margaret  E.  Sangster. 

The  children  gather  the  table  round, 

And  this  is  rosy  and  that  is  fair, 
No  dearer  group  in  the  land  is  found, 

With  their  laughing  eyes  and  their  golden  hair. 

— Margaret  E.  Sangster. 

Among  these  latter  busts  we  count  by  scores, 

Half  emperors,  and  quarter  emperors, 

Each  in  his  bay-leaf  fillet,  loose-thonged  vest, 

Doric  and  low-browed  Gorgon  on  his  breast ; 

One  loves  a  baby  face  with  violets  there, 

Violets  instead  of  laurel  in  the  hair, 

As  those  were  all  the  little  locks  could  bear. 

— Browning. 

But  one  house  will  be  only  half  peopled  if  there  comes  there  no  new  life 
in  the  little  child  to  carry  on  and  enlarge  the  old. 

When  the  first  whisper  comes  to  the  young  mother's  heart  which  calls  to 
her,  "Blessed  art  thou  among  women,"  which  tells  her  that  the  strength  of 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  261 

Tier  love  has  kindled  a  new  being,  it  is  not  of  the  great  gulf  of  death  that  she 
must  cross  to  win  her  treasure  that  most  she  thinks,  but  of  the  field  of  her  past 
years,  and  of  the  influences  that  have  made  her  what  she  is  for  good  or  ill. 

"There  are  two  moments  in  a  diver's  life: 
One,  when  a  beggar  he  prepares  to  plunge, 
One,  when  a  prince  he  rises  with  his  pearl," 

she  may  perchance  repeat,  but  not  until  she  rises  with  her  pearl  from  the 
black  depths  into  which  she  plunged  more  bravely  than  any  man  ever  went 
to  battle,  not  until  that  most  awful  of  all  moments  when  she  has  felt  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Lord  of  Life  beside  her,  not  until  that  sweetest  of  all  moments 
when  the  little  face  lies  near  her  own,  when  her  tired  arms  clasp  that  which 
yesterday  was  not  and  to-day  is,  does  she  penetrate  the  secret  and  burden  of 
those  past  years  to  its  full  meaning,  and  in  the  cup  of  her  joy  find  a  bitter 
tang,  the  sting  of  her  own  sins  and  errors,  the  effect  of*\vhich  the  silent  work 
of  nature  has  passed  over  to  her  child,  and  made  him  in  great  degree  that 
which  she  has  made  herself.  Every  mother  knows  something  of  the  bitter- 
ness of  this  regret,  unless  she  be  immeasurably  centered  in  the  sphere  of  her 
own  self-conceit;  and  from  tha  instant  of  the  experience  her  life  is  bent 
toward  undoing  any  evil  the  child  may  have  inherited  from  her  or  from  an- 
other, and  toward  bringing  all  good  influences  to  bear  in  developing  his  being 
symmetrically  and  in  making  him  a  blessing  to  his  race,  something  lovely  in 
the  Eternal  eyes,  it  may  be,  something  worthy  of  the  full  receipt  of  that  life 
which  is  love.  She  may  be  the  sternest  disbeliever  in  religious  doctrine  and 
dogma,  finding  no  satisfaction  to  reason  in  the  substance  of  any  creed,  but  in 
this  moment  a  sterner  doubt  will  possess  her:  the  dcubt  if  this  little  spirit 
can  be  anything  less  than  immortal;  and  she  finds  herself  proceeding  on  that 
supposition,  and,  in  the  peradventure,  doing  her  best  to  give  him  a  good  start 
in  immortality.  When  those  die  whom,  living,  we  adored,  it  seems  blasphemy 
to  them  to  doubt  of  their  continued  existence ;  when  those  are  born  of  our 
love,  as  we  know  that  love  is  everlasting  we  are  assured  that  they  partake  of 
the  nature  of  that  which  gave  them  existence. 

As  the  mother  lies  quiescent  in  the  long  days,  in  the  still  watches  of  the 
night,  more  often  than  otherwise  her  mind  is  busy  with  the  great  verities; 
she  is  rehearsing  the  child's  future  for  him;  she  is  weighing  and  judging  his 
possibilities;  she  is  thinking  how  this  one  fault  that  is  his  father's  may  be 
brought  to  naught  in  him,  those  noble  qualities  be  brought  to  light,  how  those 
boundless  faults  that  are  her  own  may  be  exterminated  or  rendered  abortive, 
how  the  moral  and  spiritual  inheritances  from  his  ancestry  may  be  handled, 
how  best  shall  be  developed  this  last  flower  o:*  the  race.  She  sees  that  growth 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

X 

is  the  unfolding  of  life;  that  ^here  is  in  it  something  of  the  divine;  that  it 
must  not  be  hindered ;  and  that  possibly  all  she  may  be  able  to  do  is  to  keep 
off  injurious  influence. 

If  she  never  prayed  before,  she  prays  now;  if  she  never  suffered  before, 
she  suffers  now ;  if  she  was  never  glad  before,  she  is  glad  now ;  glad  with  a 
sweet  awe  that  she  and  the  Eternal  Powers  of  goodness  are  to  work  together 
in  making  this  child  worthy  not  only  of  his  mortal,  but  also  of  his  immortal, 
parentage. 

The   Baby. 

The  helpless  morsel  of  humanity  and  flannel  that  has  come  into  the  house 
and  has  presently  through  his  imperious  necessities  turned  it  upside  down 
and  made  all  its  people  slaves,  is  not  three  days  old  before  he  has  found  out 
who  is  master.  When*  this  little  immortal  being  yells,  he  yells  with  all  the 
force  of  his  immortality  behind  him  ;  the  household  prostrates  itself  as  if  be- 
fore the  vast  outside  agencies  of  the  unknown.  A  kitten  might  squeal,  a 
puppy  howl ;  we  would  relieve  it ;  but  it  would  not  be  that  matter  of  vital 
concern  and  effort  that  the  relief  cf  the  baby  becomes ;  and  although  we  are 
not  conscious  of  it,  it  is  not  our  sense  of  selfish  possession  that  prostrates  us 
so  much  as  our  consciousness  of  this  new  being's  identity,  with  the  first  grop- 
ing of  his  hands,  the  first  wandering  of  his  eyes,  and  of  his  being  the  latest 
manifestation  of  this  vast  unknown,  the  finest  and  last  result  of  a  long  line 
of  generation,  the  crown  of  our  own  existences,  the  thing  we  love  as  a  part  of 
ourselves,  and  perhaps  as  a  part  of  heaven,  too. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  little  child  has  not  learned  to  focus  his  eyesight, 
when,  lying  on  his  face  across  his  nurse's  knee,  he  may  be  seen  to  lift  his 
head  and  survey  his  surroundings.  In  that  survey  he  has  made  up  his  mind 
about  many  things  and  evolved  the  germ  of  his  self-will.  The  problem  that 
presents  itself  is  not  to  break  that  will  but  to  direct  it ;  never  to  awake  it  in 
contradiction  to  the  superior  will,  never  to  let  the  child  know  the  need  of 
screaming  or  insisting,  or  the  possibility  of  any  gratification  following  such 
screaming  or  insisting,  to  let  him  find  that,  strong  as  his  will  may  be,  the 
superior  will  is  stronger,  and  it  is  profitless  to  resist  it;  that  there  is  to  be  no 
yielding  or  changing  after  refusal  or  command,  no  playing  fast  or  loose,  biit 
wise  determination  in  the  first  and  a  firm  hold  of  that  determination  after- 
ward, no  matter  under  what  pressure  of  the  child's  wish  or  of  a  personal  de- 
sire to  the  contrary.  And  with  that  the  child  is  led  to  see  that  neither  one 
will  nor  the  other  is  of  any  use  in  contest  with  the  facts  of  the  universe,  that 
fire  will  burn,  that  water  will  drown,  that  blows  will  hurt,  and  that  there 


STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS 


263 


must  be  accommodation  to 
the  truth,  and  he  will  have 
taken  then  his  first  conscious 
step  into  the  world  outside  his 
own  narrow  periphery,  the 
world  of  law. 

If  one  asked  the  young 
mother  what  was  her  first 
duty,  she  would  reply  that  it 
was  to  establish  habits  of 
health  in  her  child.  Undoubt- 
edly she  is  right.  But  if  she 
has  fed  her  child  at  such  regu- 
lar intervals  that  he  has  never 
had  to  exercise  lungs,  stom- 
ach, or  temper  in  demanding 
food;  if  she  has  put  him  to 
sleep  alone  so  early  that  he 
lias  never  known  any  other 
way,  and  has  never  had  to 
have  his  nerves  rasped  or  his 
terrors  excited  by  the  unac- 
customed fact,  then  she  has 
already  established  some 
habits  of  physical  health,  even 
while  attending  at  the  same 

time  and  in  a  small  way  to  matters  of  the  higher  nature.  Of  course  it  is  a 
self-evident  fact  that  no  thoroughly  harmonious  nature  can  be  expanded  from 
an  unsound  body;  and  that  the  work  calculated  to  achieve  or  to  maintain 
the  sound  body  must  be  coincident  with  other  work,  and  must  be  unremit- 
ting. 


WHAT  A  SINGULAR  CHARM  THERE  IS  ABOUT 
THE  FIRST  FIRE  OF  WOOD! 


The  Physical  Care  of  the  Baby. 

It  is  almost  presumptuous  to  say  to  the  mother  that  her  child  must  be 
watched  from  the  first,  in  order  that  it  may  be  known  how  well  or  how  ill  his 
food  agrees  with  him;  that  if  he  is  obliged  to  resort  to  artificial  food  it  must 
be  prepared  with  the  greatest  care  and  cleanliness,  with  no  long  tubes  and 
coils  in  his  drinking-vessels  to  nourish  the  deadly  ptomaines,  and  that  the 


264  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

child  must  never  be  allowed  to  become  so  hungry  as  to  gulp  down  greedily 
more  than  can  be  disposed  of  healthfully  instead  of  such  amount  as  the 
stomach  can  handle  with  slow  and  gentle  satisfaction. 

Constant  care  is  the  price  of  everything  valued  in  this  world,  and  the 
bodily  habits  must  be  made  a  matter  of  close  observation,  and  if  in  any  way 
they  fail,  the  physician  must  be  summoned  and  obeyed. 

That  the  child  must  be  kept  dry,  that  chafing 'must  be  prevented  by  the 
use  ot  home-made  unguents  pleasantly  scented,  or  of  finely  sifted  starch 
rather  than  of  the  possibly  dangerous  and  highly  perfumed  powders  to  be 
bought,  that  a  few  drops  of  oil,  a  soft  sponge  and  soap  and  water  must  be 
relied  on  to  cleanse  his  head,  that  his  hands  and  feet  must  be  always  warm, 
that  the  sleep  must  not  be  made  restless  by  too  much  clothing,  creating  a 
heat  that  weakens,  all  these  again  are  so  self-evident  facts  that  one  feels  like 
apologizing  for  mentioning  them. 

The  mother  herself  must  judge  whether  the  child,  if  puny  and  delicate, 
shall  sleep  alone  or  have  the  warmth  of  her  arms;  her  mother- wit  will  tell  her 
that  he  must  be  handled  as  little  as  love  can  allow,  must  be  fondled  and 
breathed  over  no  more  than  is  indispensable,  must  be  excused  from  promis- 
cuous kissing  from  all  sorts  of  lips,  must  not  have  his  brain  excited  by  too 
many  faces,  too  much  talking,  too  much  going  and  coming  about  him.  This 
same  mother-wit,  too,  will  abolish  the  long  picturesque  skirts  loaded  with 
finery  that  bear  and  deform  the  baby's  legs  and  feet,  and  will  shorten  all 
skirts  at  the  first  moment  in  which  the  growth  of  the  baby  and  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  weather  act  together,  and  will,  moreover,  cover  the  neck  and  arms, 
so  lovely  to  look  at  and  to  kiss,  with  high-throated  and  long-sleeved  slips,  if 
indeed  it  does  not  keep  the  baby  in  little  night-dresses  for  many  weeks  rather 
than  in  embroideries,  laces,  and  ruffles.  Mother-wit,  too,  will  make  the  bath 
in  tepid  water  a  daily  habit  and  joy  from  the  first ;  in  the  early  days,  wash- 
ing and  wiping  and  covering  a  little  surface  at  a  time,  and  the  full  plunge 
bath  when  the  little  bather  is  able  to  splash  the  water  with  glee  and  compre- 
hension ;  but  even  then  the  child  will  not  be  left  in  the  water  long  enough  to 
become  blue  or  to  receive  the  least  chill. 

Much  of  all  this  is  such  intuitive  knowledge  that  many  mothers  may  consider 
even  the  suggestion  an  impertinence.  Nevertheless,  the  mother  who  follows 
these  hints,  whether  naturally  or  otherwise,  and  further  sees  to  it  that  her 
house,  her  drinking  water,  and  the  drinking  water  of  her  cow,  as  well  as  all 
her  own  habits,  are  healthy,  will  be  rewarded  with  the  possession  of  such  rosy 
wholesomeness,  such  beaming  intelligence  as  only  a  thoroughly  comfortable 
baby  can  show,  and  with  such  joy  as  only  the  possession  of  such  a  treasure 
can  give  a  yearning  and  a  tender  heart. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS  265 

The  Moral  Growth  of  the  Child. 

From  the  healthy  animal  being  made  sure,  by  circumspection  and  solici- 
tude, we  may  hope  to  see  the  healthy  mental  and  moral  being  evolved.  Men- 
tal and  moral  being  will  be  evolved  in  some  way,  since  that  is  an  affair  in- 
cident to  all  in  the  process  of  the  opening  out  of  that  integral  germ  of  in- 
dividuality which  belongs  to  each  child  as  much  as  the  development  of  seed 
and  flower  belongs  to  the  plant.  Out  ot  its  own  mysterious  sources  will  come 
the  unfolding  of  the  sturdy  oak  from  the  acorn,  of  the  butterfly  from  the 
worm,  of  the  storm-sweeping  eagle  from  the  egg,  of  the  sage,  the  hero,  the 
Saviour,  from  the  first  feeble  morsel  of  humanity.  But  the  determination  of 
that  unfolding,  of  the  quality  and  direction  of  that  mental  and  moral  being, 
are  very  lovely  in  the  power  of  the  child's  environment,  and  thus  in  that  of 
his  mother  and  father.  Resting  in  this  germ  of  individuality,  it  has  been 
widely  proved,  lie  many  of  the  capacities  of  generations  of  ancestors,  although 
certainly  not  all  of  those  capacities ;  for  some  have  been  annihilated  by  inter- 
marriage with  contradictory  and  stronger  ones,  some  have  been  atrophied  by 
disuse.  Those  remain  by  re-inforcement  and  accretion  either  from  the  re- 
mote or  recent  past,  while  others  are  dormant  but  not  yet  withered,  and  capa- 
ble under  re-animating  circumstances  of  being  brought  into  use  whether  for 
good  or  evil.  We  see  in  almost  every  family  some  one  person  in  whom  have 
survived  the  traits  of  those  dead  and  gone  this  many  a  year,  traits  long  ago 
dropped  by  all  the  rest  of  the  connection.  The  careful  parent  will  not  allow 
the  possibilities  these  thoughts  suggest  to  be  forgotten ;  and  in  this  view, 
knowledge  concerning  one's  lineage  is  always  to  be  desired.  If  among  these 
dormant  capacities  there  are  any  of  value,  it  is  the  parent's  part  to  vivify 
them,  to  stimulate  and  strengthen  them  in  action,  and  if  there  are  any  noxious 
ones,  to  use  every  endeavor  still  further  to  asphyxiate  and  destroy  them. 

This  recurrence  of  traits  is  seen  so  surely  in  the  physical  life  that  we 
might  know  the  natural  corollary  of  it  all  is  in  the  moral.  In  certain  house- 
holds a  peculiarity  of  the  eyes  will  re-appear  from  time  to  time  till  it  is  known 
as  the  family  eye,  and  it  will  be  seen  in  old  portraits,  where  they  exist,  for 
ten  generations  back.  Where  there  has  been  a  hunch-back,  it  is  tolerably 
sure  that  somewhere  in  succeeding  generations  there  will  be  another;  it  will 
be  thought  and  declared  then  to  be  the  result  of  accident,  but  investigation 
will  probably  discover  the  congenital  weak  spine  in  some  shape  all  along  the 
line,  and  knowledge  of  the  liability  will  tend  to  make  us  overcome  the  cast  in 
the  eye  and  strengthen  the  weakness  of  the  back.  The  same  thing  is  familiar 
to  us  in  the  moral  world;  certain  families  are  known  to  be  of  jealous  and  vin- 
dictive natures;  certain  ones  to  have  parsimonious  qualities;  of  these  one  is 


266  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

as  sure  of  their  benevolence  as  of  their  name;  in  others  a  scholarly  habit  has 
existed  since  they  were  known  as  a  family  at  all. 

Thus  the  work  of  the  guardians  of  the  child  is  plainly  set  before  them ; 
to  repress  here,  to  forward  there,  to  increase  existing  power,  to  nullify  wrong 
tendencies.  It  looks  like  a  vast  task;  but  when  it  is  remembered  that  it 
means  but  a  word  at  a  time,  day  after  day,  one  recalls  the  discontented  pen- 
dulum, and  is  not  so  much  appalled.  The  carrot,  some  one  tells  us,  has  to 
have  twenty  generations  of  culture  before  it  is  edible ;  but,  en  the  other  hand, 
let  it  be  left  alone  for  five  generations  and  it  is  again  worthless. 

Still,  although  so  gradual,  this  task  of  directing  the  child's  growth  is  an 
unceasing  one;  for  going  along  at  the  same  time  with  the  destruction  of  evil 
inheritances  and  the  stimulation  of  good  ones,  there  is  usually  also  the  im 
planting  of  other  distinct  and  positive  characteristics  as  they  are  seen  to  be 
necessary.  It  ought  not  to  be  a  difficult  one,  however;  for  some  of  the  de- 
sired traits  are  but  the  revival  of  those  originated  or  taught  by  our  earliest 
Aryan  fathers,  courage,  truth,  and  worship,  and  much  of  it  is  done  in  letting 
our  children  see  the  noble  qualities  in  our  own  lives  and  conduct.  There  is  a 
sort  of  creative  happiness  in  the  work,  meantime.  We  have  seen  a  young 
mother  who  experienced  deadly  fear  in  a  thunder  storm,  her  heart  sinking 
with  every  flash,  hold  her  little  child  up  to  look  at  the  lightning  with  smiles 
on  her  face,  as  if  nothing  were  more  to  be  admired  than  the  blue  and  rosy 
splendor  of  the  flash,  and  lift  her  finger  the  while  inclining  her  head  to  listen, 
as  if  the  reverberations  of  the  thunder,  the  house  shaking  with  the  concussion, 
were  music  in  her  ears,  because  she  was  determined  the  child  should  not  be 
the  heir,  of  the  tremors  and  sufferings  of  others.  It  may  have  been  an  ordeal 
to  her,  but  it  would  have  been  a  worse  ordeal  to  have  her  son  a  coward ;  and 
she  was  but  repeating  the  lesson  the  first  Aryan  mother  taught  her  son  far 
away  in  the  abyss  of  past  ages,  and  she  has  a  joy  in  doing  it  that  more  than 
compensated  her,  for  she  was  creating  a  hero. 

Deny  the  existence  of  original  sin,  as  we  may,  the  survival  and  appear- 
ance of  these  ancestral  traits,  whether  rudimentary  or  full-flowered,  which  we 
shall  constantly  see  in  our  children,  if  we  look  for  them,  amount  in  practical 
dealing  to  the  same  thing.  Selfishness,  fear,  falsehood,  cruelty,  sensuality, 
will  be  the  ghosts  coming  to  revisit  the  pale  glimpses  of  the  moon,  vastly 
modified,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  but  still  the  same  as  in  the  mother  of  all  the 
Jukes,  and  some  one  of  them  probably  to  be  contended  with  by  any  one  who 
has  the  care  of  the  last  inheritor  of  all  the  virtues  and  vices  gene  before,  the 
last  heir  of  all  the  ages,  the  child  of  any  household.  Yet  it  is  not  to  be  for- 
gotten that  good  has  been  inherited  with  the  evil,  the  good  of  all  the  strug- 
gles against  temptation,  the  effort  toward  the  better  and  higher,  the  refusal 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  267 

to  surrender  to  sin,  till  that  effort,  that  struggle,  that  refusal,  till,  in  short, 
virtue  becomes  an  hereditament.  Hence  to  stultify  the  evil,  to  foster  the 
good,  is  the  burden  that  the  parents  take  up  with  their  first-born's  first  breath. 
It  is  a  burden  they  have  no  right  to  lay  down  for  a  day.  They  are  responsi- 
ble for  the  child's  existence,  and  so  for  what  he  does  with  his  existence.  It 
was  they  who  called  these  spirits  from  the  vasty  deep;  it  is  they  who  must 
lead  them  as  Solomon  led  the  genii  in  a  leash. 

When  a  child  commits  its  first  theft  of  apple,  or  cake,  or  what-not,  the  mothei 
may  well  feel  a  horrible  fear  of  the  apparition  of  the  original  cave-dwelling 
savage,  of  the  foraging  marauder,  the  highwayman,  the  thieving  borderer, 
the  vassal  or  serf  who  attended  the  high-handed  raider  who  knew  no  other 
law  than  that  of  might.  When  the  child  strikes  its  first  angry  blow,  she  sees 
all  that  old  original  savage  rising  in  him.  "Opy  the  door!"  cried  a  two-year- 
old  child.  "When  I  say 'opy  the  door,' opy  the  door!"  And  the  mother 
knew  that  the  time  had  come  for  her  to  obey  tremblingly  or  to  resist  to  the 
death  the  domineering  spirit  that  had  never  been  laid  to  rest  with  bell,  book, 
or  candle,  capable  of  ruining  the  peace  of  a  family  to  come  as  it  might  have 
ruined  the  peace  of  those  dead  and  gone.  "You  said  I  would  feel  better  when 
I  had  given  away  some  of  my  caramels,"  said  another  little  re-embodied  trait. 
"I  don't  feel  any  better.  When  shall  I  begin  to  feel  better?"  And  this 
mother  saw  something  appalling  as  any  old  family  ghosts,  the  old  miserly 
spirit  of  one  strain  of  his  ancestry  rising  to  contest,  not  with  the  desire  for  a 
peaceful  conscience,  but  with  the  spirit  that  loves  luxury  and  ease  so  much 
that  it  never  does  right,  but  only  with  the  slothful  dislike  of  the  consequences 
of  wrong;  and  while  others  smiled  at  the  naivet  of  the  urchin  she  saw  a 
problem  before  her  as  intricate  as  one  in  the  calculus  of  imaginaries.  Per- 
haps it  would  help  her  to  remember  that  one  of  the  fairy  fancies  of  science 
has  been  that  owing  to  the  thinner  and  lighter  atmosphere  of  the  planet  Mars, 
the  birds  got  the  start  there,  in  the  matter  of  evolution,  making  the  intelli- 
gent being  of  Mars,  the  human  being  there,  a  winged  creature.  It  is  her 
art  to  make  his  moral  atmosphere  that  which  shall  develop  the  winged  being 
in  her  child's  nature. 


Help  in  the  Problem  from  the  Great  Educator. 

In  the  solution  of  the  mother's  problem  as  to  the  right  way  to  develop 
the  minds  of  her  children  many  great  minds  have  come  to  her  assistance;  but 
none  of  them  more  practically  than  Pestalozzi,  Rousseau,  and  Froebel,  the 
latter  with  a  patient  working  out  of  system  that  was  creative.  It  is  Froebel's 


268 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


ROCK  ME  TO  SLEEP,   MOTHER. 


ideas  that  now 
govern  nearly 
all  primary  edu- 
cation, even 
where  his  whole 
plan  of  teaching 
is  not  carried 
out.  The  inten- 
tion of  his  work 
is  to  evoke  a 
universal  and 
all-round  devel- 
opment of  the 
nature  and  the 
faculties,  and 
this  is  done  by 
turning  the  nat- 
ural  activities 
of  the  child  to 
use,  by  develop- 
ing the  body 
through  gentle 
and  rhythmical 
gymnastics,  and 
the  soul  through 
the  simultane- 
ous action  of 
the  senses  and 
of  the  social 
sympathies  and 
instincts. 


Froebel. 


It  is  by   the 
slow  process  of 

many  years  that  the  excellence  of  Froebel' s  ideas  has  been  proved,  and  the 
process  was  accompanied  by  ridicule  and  obstruction  till  it  triumphed.  But 
the  wonderful  man  had  stanch  adherents  and  powerful  friends  in  his  life-time. 
When  some  one  spoke  of  him  as  an  old  fool,  a. learned  professor  replied  that 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  269 

Socrates  was  that  sort  of  fool ;  when  he  died,  his  grave  was  filled  with  flowers 
by  children  whose  lives  he  had  developed  as  those  flowers  had  themselves  been 
developed  from  wildlings. 

His  work  beginning- with  one  school — a  school  of  whose  pupils  Prof.  Fichte, 
the  son  of  the  great  philosopher,  declared  that  they  showed  exceptional  in- 
telligence in  the  Universities  and  elsewhere — is  now  the  compulsory  system 
of  Austria  and  of  several  other  European  countries,  and  is  on  the  way  to  be 
widely  adopted  in  the  United  States,  very  notably  in  the  schools  of  Boston — 
an  interesting  fact  because  it  was  toward  us  that  Froebel  looked  for  welcome. 

Among  prominent  people  who  have  interested  themselves  in  the  work  is 
the  Empress  Frederick,  who  had  her  children  reared  according  to  its  plan, 
and  who  is  the  patroness  of  certain  institutions  in  London,  where  Robert 
Owen  introduced  it;  and  the  Princess  Pauline  of  Lippe-Detmold,  and  the 
Duchess  Helene  of  Orleans  have  made  use  of  it,  in  forms  somewhat  modified 
for  the  very  young  and  the  very  poor.  It  is  even  used  among  those  having 
most  success  in  the  schools  for  the  blind,  and  it  is  undoubtedly  to  become  the 
one  and  only  method  of  educing  and  training  the  intelligence  of  children 
the  world  over.  "The  most  delicate,  the  most  difficult  and  the  most  impor- 
tant part  of  the  training  of  children,"  writes  the  Baroness Marenholtz-Bulow, 
in  quoting  Froebel,  "consists  in  the  development  of  their  inner  and  higher 
life  of  feeling  and  of  soul,  from  which  springs  all  that  is  highest  and  holiest 
in  the  life  of  men  and  of  mankind ;  in  short,  the  religious  life,  the  life  that  is 
at  one  with  God  in  feeling,  in  thought,  and  in  action.  When  and  where  does 
this  life  begin ?  It  is  as  with  the  seeds  in  spring;  they  remain  long  hidden 
under  the  earth  before  they  become  outwardly  visible.  It  is  as  with  the  stars 
of  heaven,  which  astronomers  tell  us  have  shone  for  ages  in  space  ere  their 
light  has  fallen  on  our  eyes.  We  know  not,  then,  when  and  where  this  relig- 
ious development,  this  process  of  re-union  with  God,  first  begins  in  the 
child.  If  we  are  over-hasty  with  our  care  and  attention  the  result  will  be  the 
same  as  with  the  seedling  which  is  exposed  too  early  and  too  directly  to  the 
sun's  heat  or  to  the  moisture  of  rain.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  are  behind- 
hand, the  consequences  will  be  equally  fatal.  What  then  must  education  do  ? 
It  must  proceed  as  gently  and  gradually  as  possible,  and  in  this  respect,  as 
with  all  other  kinds  of  development,  work  first  only  through  general  influ- 
ences. As  the  child's  physical  condition  is  healthily  or  injuriously  affected 
by  the  badness  or  goodness  of  the  air  which  it  breathes,  so  will  the  religious 
atmosphere  by  which  it  is  surrounded  determine  its  religious  development.^1 

Music,  gesture,  expression,  love,  are  the  first  agencies  which  Froelei 
would  use  in  his  work;  and  in  taking  advantage  of  the  intimate  communication 
between  the  mother  and  the  child,  he  would  have  all  the  mother's  moods  fine, 


270  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

and  in  the  school  those  of  the  young  teacher  or  kindergartner,  the  mother  for 
the  moment,  because  the  child  shares  these  moods.  And  while  he  makes  the 
kindergarten  a  miniature  world  for  the  child,  he  makes  its  system  a  school  for 
mothers.  Indeed  a  school  for  mothers  has  been  established  on  this  basis  and 
with  this  name  in  Prussia,  and  it  is  much  to  be  wished  that  we  might  have 
the  same  thing  here.  Something  of  the  sort,  to  be  sure,  has  been  attempted, 
but  one  class  of  mothers  had  no  time  from  their  work,  and  the  other  class 
from  their  play,  and  nothing  has  as  yet  resulted. 

In  the  modern  system  of  training  children  the  work  begins  at  the  earliest 
moment ;  for  as  there  is  no  moment  too  early  for  the  implanting  of  evil,  it  is 
to  be  counteracted  and  prevented  at  the  outset.  "  A  tender  young  leaf  pricked 
;n  the  spring-time  with  the  finest  needle  will  show  a  scar  of  continually  in- 
creasing size,  till  it  withers  in  the  fall."  If  one  were  to  condense  the  system 
to  a  few  words,  one  would  merely  repeat  Froebel's  own  intention  of  satisfying 
the  child's  demands  as  much  as  possible,  of  being  wisely  indulgent,  and  of 
allowing  the  child,  so  far  as  consistent  with  safety,  to  learn  by  experience. 
By  this  means  when  the  child  attains  his  seventh  year  and  leaves  the  kinder- 
garten, character  has  been  expanded,  habits  of  discipline,  obedience,  exacti- 
tude, niceness,  and  unselfishness  have  been  formed,  the  will  has  been  trained 
through  the  exploitation  of  wise  motives  and  reflection  on  the  result  of  action, 
the  intellect  and  the  emotions  have  been  exercised,  while  all  the  social  in- 
stincts have  been  fed  and  strengthened  to  demand  yet  more  food,  instincts 
that  are  our  joy,  and,  so  far  as  much  of  the  happiness  of  this  life  is  concerned, 
are  almost  our  salvation.  And  in  the  mean  time  the  child  has  learned  some- 
thing of  his  relation  to  inorganic  nature,,  to  nature  even  in  the  iron  in  his 
blood,  the  chalk  in  his  bones,  to  human  nature,  and,  it  is  claimed,  to  God,  and 
to  God  in  nature. 

At  seven  years  the  child  has  attained  one-half  his  stature,  one-third  his 
weight,  and  his  brain,  save  in  exceptional  instances,  is  as  large  as  it  is  going 
to  be.  But  although  the  brain  has  attained  its  size,  it  has  not  made  much 
progress  toward  differentiation ;  its  structural  development  is  still  very  em- 
bryonic, but  has  been  given  tendency  and  direction,  for,  in  the  words  of  an 
authority,  "all  brain  activity  reacts  on  the  particular  structure  engaged,  modi- 
fying it  in  some  unknown  way,  and  bringing  about  a  subsequent  physiological 
disposition  to  act  in  a  similar  manner,"  establishing  thus  a  habit,  perhaps  a 
faculty,  as  a  gardener  establishes  a  new  variety.  It  is  during  this  plastic 
period  before  the  seventh  year  that  Froebel  puts  in  his  work — the  period  that 
used  to  be  thought  of  small  account,  in  which  the  child  was  dealt  with  as  a 
little  animal,  or  not  much  more,  and  in  which  he  has-been,  until  lately,  left  to 
the  care  of  nurses  and  ignorant  servants,  where  there  were  nurses  and  ser- 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  271 

vants  to  be  had,  and  left  to  run  wild  where  there  were  not.  To  deal  with  this 
period  now,  all  the  intelligence,  learning,  moral  culture,  and  civilized  graces, 
are  not  thought  too  much ;  and  the  work  may  be  done  in  the  preliminary 
school,  or  it  may  be  done  in  the  home  nursery. 


The  Kindergarten. 

All  the  methods  of  the  kindergarten  work  are  the  result  of  the  most  ex- 
quisite study  and  elaboration.  They  go  so  far  as  to  analyze  the  character  of 
the  child's  pleasure,  in  the  game  of  bo-peep,  for  instance — the  willing  surren- 
der of  the  sight  of  the  mother's  face  for  the  sake  of  the  fresh  joy  of  seeing  it 
again ;  and  in  the  later  game  of  hide-and-seek,  they  show  that  the  hiding  is 
for  the  instinctive  delight  of  being  found,  and  that  in  carrying  this  play  too 
far,  or  in  leaving  the  child  unsatisfied  by  expressions  of  pleasure  at  the  rind- 
ing, there  is  danger  of  letting  the  interest  degenerate  from  the  social  and 
unselfish  pleasure  into  the  love  of  hiding  for  its  own  sake  and  so  into  love  of 
concealment,  into  slyness  and  deceit.  How  many  years  ago  is  it  that  Plutarch 
said  that  children  should  be  taught  to  avoid  all  that  savors  of  secrecy,  which 
tends  to  lead  them  away  from  uprightness  and  to  accustom  them  to  wrong ! 

It  is  through  the  child's  play  that  all  this  study  of  his  nature  and  effort 
to  meet  his  necessities  proceeds.  For  play  is  the  expression  of  the  child's 
nature,  it  is  the  way  in  which  he  attacks  life,  in  which  he  reproduces  his  ex- 
periences, classifies  his  tendencies,  and  exhibits  his  inmost  being  and  all  its 
outreaching.  In  this  play  the  child  acts  over  again  all  that  he  has  seen  and 
would  fain  comprehend,  and  in  this  play  he  individualizes  the  inner  spark 
which  is  himself  and  which  is  to  be  the  agent  of  good  or  evil  in  him.  One  of 
Froebel's  chief  interests  was  in  seeing  the  progression  of  the  whole  race  from 
its  savage  days  in  the  play  of  the  child.  "He  draws  a  parallel,"  says  Miss 
Blow,  "between  the  child's  love  for  running  and  wrestling,  and  for  all  games 
of  physical  prowess,  and  that  first  stage  of  human  society  when  all  men  were 
hunters,  warriors  and  athletes.  He  connects  the  child's  love  for  digging  in 
the  ground  with  that  agricultural  instinct  which  transformed  nomadic  tribes 
into  nations  of  husbandmen.  He  shows  us  the  germ  of  rights  and  prosperity 
in  the  boy's  love  of  ownership,  opens  our  eyes  to  see  in  mud  pies  a  faint 
straggle  of  the  plastic  instinct,  persuades  us  to  hear  in  the  rhythmic  cooing  of 
the  baby  a  prophecy  of  music,  and  bids  us  reverence  the  dawn  of  science  in 
the  eager  habit  of  investigation.  But  he  lingers  most  lovingly  of  all  over 
those  manifestations  which  reveal  essential  human  connections,  and  never 
tires  of  following  the  soul  as  it  struggles  from  darkness  into  light." 

As  it  has  already  been  said,  the  very  beginning  of  Froebel's  system  lies 


272  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

in  his  deep  intimacy  with  the  hearts  of  mothers,  his  knowledge  of  them,  and 
fellowship  with  them. 

He  has  for  the  mother  almost  a  divine  tenderness;  he  educates  her  while 
he  shows  her  how  to  make  her  child  a  symmetrical  and  a  spiritual  being. 

As  the  kindergarten  is  the  next  step  from  the  mother's  arms,  it  is  con- 
tinued in  the  mother's  spirit;  and  as  the  smile  is  the  first  expression  of  love 
between  mother  and  child,  in  the  spirit  of  that  smile  is  a  subsequent  training 
to  be  given  and  received.  In  the  kindergarten  book  of  nursery  songs  and 
games,  with  every  song  for  the  child  there  is  a  motto  for  the  mother,  to  show 
her  the  feeling  in  which  the  little  game  would  best  be  played  or  the  song 
sung.  Froebel  went  about  among  the  people  studying  mothers  and  babies : 
and  it  would  seem  as  if  he  had  caught  and  preserved  every  emotion  of  the 
little  being  in  its  first  taking  hold  of  life,  and  he  taught  mothers  what  their 
own  natural  play  with  their  babies  meant,  and  how  it  might  be  made  yet  more 
effectual.  In  this  way  motherhood  is  formulated  into  a  science,  but  all  so 
naturally  that  one  sees,  as  it  were,  an  apotheosis  of  pure  family  life  in  every 
household  where  these  ideas  are  adopted  and  their  leading  followed,  that  of 
"father,  mother,  child,  of  light  and  love  and  life."  It  is  through  the  mother 
that  the  child  reaches  that  self-knowledge  which  is  also  self -reverence  and 
self-control ;  it  is  through  her  instant  sympathy  that  his  instinctive  activity 
compasses  all  culture ;  it  is  through  the  mother  that  the  world  of  self,  of 
others,  of  all  the  outside  universe  is  first  reached  by  the  child ;  but  it  is  all 
under  a  process  not  of  forcing  but  of  self -development. 

Love  is  to  call  out  faith,  needs  are  to  demand  fulfillment,  as  in  the  in- 
stance given  by  one  of  his  exponents,  of  the  little  child  who  being  abused  by 
her  nurse,  and  wishing  to  complain  to  her  mother,  who  was  absent,  exclaimed 
desperately,  "Father  in  Heaven  tell  her!"  and  uttered  her  first  cry  for  spirit- 
ual help  that  way.  "Can  you  tell,  O  Mother, "  Froebel  asks,  "when  the  spirit- 
ual development  of  your  child  begins?  Can  you  trace  the  boundary  line 
which  separates  the  conscious  from  the  unconscious  soul?  In  God's  world, 
just  because  it  is  God's  world,  the  law  of  all  things  is  continuity — there  are 
and  can  be  no  abrupt  beginnings,  no  rude  transitions,  no  to-day  which  is  not 
based  upon  yesterday.  The  distant  stars  were  shining  long  before  their  rays 
reached  our  earth.  The  seed  germinates  in  darkness,  and  is  growing  long 
before  we  can  see  its  growth.  So  in  the  depths  of  the  infant  soul  a  process 
goes  on  which  is  hidden  from  our  eyes,  yet  upon  which  hangs  more  than  we 
can  dream  of  good  or  evil,  happiness  or  misery." 

,  In  raising  mothers  to  this  height,  it  is  recognized,  even  if  unconsciously, 
that  until  now  the  race  has  "received  its  stamp  from  the  male  half  only,"  and 
in  teaching  mothers  how  to  turn  even  their  instincts  to  account  in  educating 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  273 

theif  children,  a  new  era  is  opening,  in  which  the  children  of  the  race  will 
have  the  benefit  intellectually  of  mothers  as  well  as  fathers  in  a  way  they 
have  not  known  before,  and  which  must  be  enlarging  and  elevating  and  en- 
nobling. In  this  light  it  is  not  so  much  matter  whether  mothers  talk  baby- 
talk  to  their  children  or  not;  indeed  Rousseau  says  that  words  are  of  almost 
no  consequence  in  the  early  months,  and  that  accent  is  all-important.  It  is 
the  harsh  sentence,  the  sharp  emphasis,  the  unmusical  tone  that  must  not  be 
given  by  the  mother.  It  is  quick  and  absolute  sympathy  that  should  be 
shown  by  her:  for  as  Froebel  says,  "The  whole  after  life  of  the  human  being, 
•with  all  its  deep  significance,  passes  in  dim,  shadowy  presentiments  through 
the  child's  soul.  But  the  child  himself  does  not  understand  the  importance  of 
these  presentiments,  these  dim  strivings  and  forebodings,  and  they  are  seldom 
noticed  or  attended  to  by  the  grown-up  people  who  surround  him.  What  a 
change  there  would  be  in  all  the  conditions  of  life,  of  children,  of  young 
people,  of  humanity  in  general,  if  only  these  warning  voices  were  listened  for 
and  encouraged  in  early  childhood  and  apprehended  in  youth  in  their  highest 
meaning,1"  It  is  because  the  mother  guides  and  governs  intuitively  that  she 
is  peculiarly  fitted  to  translate  and  to  illumine  these  intuitions,  intimations,  or 
presentiments,  and  if  she  is  the  mother  that  she  should  be,  to  glorify  them, 
and  demonstrate  the  inner  meaning  of  the  universe  through  the  experience 
of  love. 

It  being  to  the  mother,  then,  that  Froebel  gives  his  first  assistance,  it  is 
out  of  her  caresses  and  endeavors  at  entertainment  that  he  builds  up  his  sys- 
tem in  a  logical  sequence  of  games  that  are  satisfying,  delighting,  and  de- 
veloping to  the  child,  adding  little  more,  only  enlarging  and  illumining  the 
old.  The  child's  first  movements  are  made  contributory  to  certain  expansive 
gymnastic  exercises,  especially  those  for  the  hand,  the  most  valued  member 
of  the  body — the  weathercock  being  the  name  of  one  of  the  earliest  games, 
since,  after  light,  the  child  osberves  motion,  which  is  life,  and  by  holding  the 
hand  out  flat  with  the  thumb  erected,  a  weathercock  is  imitated,  and  by  the 
movement  from  north  to  south,  from  east  to  west,  the  connecting  muscles  of 
the  wrist  are  brought  into  action,  the  action  being  accompanied  by  a  little 
song  which  arouses  a  spark  of  thought  The  next  step  is  to  make  the  child 
look  for  the  wind,  the  invisible  force  behind.  In  another  game  the  fingers 
represent  father  and  mother,  brother  and  sister,  and  the  children  are  named 
and  counted  and  put  to  bed.  Another  game  is  called  the  sun-bird,  and  con- 
sists of  the  vain  attempt  to  catch  the  reflection  of  the  sunbeam  flashed  to  and 
iro  by  means  of  a  piece  of  glass.  "The  child  thus  learns  at  an  early  age  that 
it  is  not  only  material  possession  that  gives  pleasure,  that  beauty  has  the 
power  to  penetrate  to  the  soul  and  to  produce  greater  happiness  than  mere 


(274) 


SHE  SPELLS  OUT  THf  UfesSON'  WtfTH   H*ER  CHILD. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  275 

enjoyment  of  the  senses  can  afford."  With  this  the  little  household  pets  and 
animals,  pigeons,  chickens,  cats,  whether  real  or  imaginary,  are  to  be  called 
around,  exciting  observation  and  friendship,  and  tempting  the  child's  desire 
for  further  knowledge.  He  is  taught  family-life  by  means  of  a  nest  of  birds; 
in  one  hand-game  he  rounds  his  hands  into  the  likeness  of  a  nest,  and  he  is 
taught  then  that  every  little  bird  is  taken  care  of  in  a  special  way,  how  it 
builds  its  nest,  where  it  is  safe  from  danger  and  where  the  food  it  requires  is 
within  reach,  and  that  it  builds  this  nest  and  hatches  its  young  ones  at  the 
time  of  year  when  the  unfledged  little  creatures  will  be  protected  by  the 
warmth  of  the  spring  sun.  And  then  the  mother  drawing  the  child's  atten- 
tion to  the  fearlessness  with  which  the  little  birds  lie  quietly  in  their  nest, 
waiting  for  the  return  of  their  mother  who  has  gone  to  fetch  them  food,  re- 
peats these  words : 

"The    heavenly    Father's  glorious  sun 

Warms  thy  home,  too,  and  makes  it  bright. 
He  shines  on  thee  and  every  one — 

Look  up,  and  thank  Him  for  His  light!" 

There  is  another  hand-game,  called  the  watering-pot,  in  which  the  child 
is  taught  the  pleasure  of  doing  for  others,  in  imitating  the  action  of  giving 
water  to  the  flowers,  while  his  intelligence  is  awakened  to  the  fact  that  all 
things  require  care.  The  child  thus  is  taught,  first,  love  for  the  father  and 
mother,  then  for  mankind,  and  then  for  the  Infinite.  He  discovers  for  him- 
self that  he  is  "the  child  of  nature,  the  child  of  humanity,  and  the  child  of 
God,"  even  although  he  does  not  put  his  discovery  into  words;  he  is  led  to 
perceive  later,  and  his  parents  are  led  to  perceive  with  him,  that  the  laws  of 
the  mind  and  the  laws  of  the  universe  are  the  same;  and  those  parents,  in 
beholding  the  soul  grope  for  and  grasp  the  organs  of  the  body,  and  use  their 
hitherto  unspiritualized  substance,  so  far  from  doubting  the  existence  of  the 
immortal  part  of  their  child,  will,  under  the  light  that  Froebel  gives,  see  it 
blossom  and  unfold  before  their  eyes. 

It  is  now  evident  that  the  office  of  education  is  that  of  assisting  and  guid- 
ing natural  development,  that  the  beginning  gives  a  bias  to  all  the  rest,  that 
the  spiritual  and  the  physical  go  on  together,  that  the  child's  intuitions  furnish 
a.  natural  basis,  and  by  using  the  physical  wants  we  reach  the  spiritual,  the 
senses  being  the  slaves  of  the  soul,  the  will,  and  the  intellect,  that  instinctive 
notice  is  to  be  led  into  conscious  action,  that  as  only  through  physical  im- 
pressions is  the  soul  awakened,  so  those  impressions  should  be  the  object  of 
care  and  not  be  left  to  chance,  and  that,  as  the  last  springs  from  the  first, 
the^process  by  education  is  to  be  continuous.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  the  simple 


(276) 


BEAUTY  AND  GLORY  OF  MOTHERHOOD. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  -277 

gymnastics  for  the  hand,  advised  "by  Froebel,  contain  the  seed  and  essence  of 
all  later  instruction. 

That  the  comprehension  and  practice  of  this  require  a  good  deal  of  study 
on  the  part  of  the  mother  is  not  to  be  denied,  but  it  is  simple,  so  gradual,  that 
it  is  not  to  be  feared,  and  it  is  all  the  time  accompanied  by  the  unfolding  and 
perfecting  of  the  flower  of  being  in  the  dearest  and  tenderest  thing  on  earth. 


The  Gifts  in  Froebel's  System. 

Froebel  wisely  begins  by  recognizing  play  as  the  absolute  business  of  a 
child's  life;  and  he  utilizes  the  fact  by  leading  play  unawares  into  work  and 
the  business  of  the  maturer  life.  He  accomplishes  this  largely  by  the  intelli- 
gent use  of  certain  toys  that  he  calls  his  "gifts,"  wholesome  to  handle,  not 
easily  injured,  thus  repressing  the  destructive  tendency;  toys  of  lovely  sug- 
gestion, and  most  of  them  not  so  complete  in  themselves  that  they  cannot 
afford  the  opportunity  of  doing  something  more  with  them.  They  can  be 
used  illustratively  in  later  periods  than  that  for  which  they  were  first  given ; 
and  they  are  chosen  to  teach  form,  color,  and  distinctive  qualities  like  weight 
and  size,  to  teach  also  the  love  of  lav;  and  the  comprehension  of  unity  in  the 
each  and  all  of  the  universe,  each  set  of  "gifts"  preparing  the  way  for  the 
next.  These  objects,  and  the  brief  drill  accompanying  them,  teach  obedience, 
promptness,  industry,  facility,  arouse  imagination,  quicken  originality,  and 
strengthen  the  body.  In  order  that  they  shall  be  intelligently  and  faithfully 
employed,  an  educated  and  grown-up  teacher  is  necessary,  the  child  having 
left  his  mother's  arms;  and  it  is  thought  best  that  no  class  shall  number  more 
than  fifteen  children. 

The  first  gift,  which,  indeed,  belongs  to  early  babyhood,  consists  of  six 
woolen  balls,  three  of  the  primary  and  three  of  the  secondary  colors,  "the  si-x 
children  of  light  in  the  rainbow,  the  symbol  of  highest  peace."  These  afford 
the  child  the  means  of  judging  of  form,  of  color,  of  direction,  up  and  down, 
to  right  and  left,  each  ball  having  a  string  so  as  to  be  under  control,  afford 
exercise,  and  lead  to  the  second  gift.  With  any  one  of  these  balls  begins  the 
application  of  the  law  of  contrasts,  the  first  contrast  lying  in  the  object  as 
one  opposed  to  or  outside  of  the  child's  self  or  identity,  and  afterward  coming 
that  of  the  varying  colors,  that  of  one  or  many  of  rest  or  motion,  of  the  latter 
in  straight  lines  or  curves,  given  in  tossing,  or  belonging  to  it  in  rebounding. 
Then,  too,  it  is  seen  that  the  ball  is  always  the  same,  equal  in  all  directions, 
is  a  representation  of  all  concentered  force;  it  gives  the  child's  first  impres- 
sion its  own  roundness  and  completeness. 


278  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

The  second  gift  is  a  wooden  ball,  and  with  it  a  cube  and  a  cylinder. 
The  ball  carries  on  the  lessons  of  the  first  gift ;  it  represents  motion  and  life, 
the  cube,  rest  and  inertia;  the  cylinder  combines  both;  standing,  it  has  in- 
ertia, rolling  it  has  life. 

"Thus  the  three  appear  as  representatives  of  the  vague  essence  of  the 
three  kingdoms  of  nature;  in  the  cube,  life  sleeps  as  in  the  mineral  kingdom, 
i  and  the  cube  moves  only  when  placed  on  edge  or  corner,  to  return  again  to 
sleep;  in  the  cylinder,  the  type  of  the  vegetable  kingdom,  axial  life  in  certain 
1  directions  begins  to  manifest  itself;  and  in  the  ball,  as  in  the  animal  king- 
dom, all-sided  life,  life  in  all  directions  is  reached.  Again,  the  second  gift 
presents  types  of  the  principal  phases  of  human  development;  from  the  easy 
mobility  of  infancy  and  childhood — the  ball — we  pass  through  the  half-steady 
stages  of  boyhood  and  girlhood,  represented  in  the  cylinder,  to  the  firm  char- 
acter of  manhood  and  womanhood  for  which  the  cube  furnishes  the  formula." 

By  revolving  the  cube,  we  find  a  cylinder;  by  revolving  the  cylinder,  a 
sphere;  by  which  we  learn,  "not  only  that  each  member  of  the  second  gift 
contains  each  and  all  of  the  others,  but  that  whatever  is  in  the  universe  is  in 
every  individual  part  of  it ;  that  even  the  meanest  holds  the  elements  of  the 
noblest ;  that  the  highest  life  is  even  in  what  in  short-sighted  conceit  we 
call  death.  And  when,  on  the  other  hand,  we  revolve  the  sphere,  and  see 
that,  try  as  we  may,  it  will  ever  remain  the  same,  we  learn  that  all-sided  ani- 
mal life  is,  indeed,  the  highest  manifestation  of  existence,  that  death  means 
decay,  and  that  only  all-sided  development  can  keep  us  from  this." 

The  third  gift,  or  the  child's  joy,  as  it  is  called,  is  a  larger  cube,  cut  so 
as  to  divide  into  eight  equal  cubes.  This  makes  a  step  in  development ;  for 
hitherto  all  has  been  whole,  indivisible,  and  complete,  all  impressions  have 
come  as  units,  and  now  analysis  and  synthesis  begin,  of  course  in  the  sim- 
plest forms,  and  the  most  easily  to  be  digested  and  assimilated,  that  of  taking 
apart  and  putting  together,  of  dividing,  changing,  and  joining,  of  using  will 
and  inventive  faculty,  all  in  the  exercise  of  the  first  glad  activity,  and  all  un- 
der that  control  which  the  shape  and  nature  of  the  small  cubes  make  inevit- 
able, so  that  destructiveness  and  rude  vandalism  are  impossible ;  and  in  the 
mean  time  number  is  taught  by  this,  and  the  idea  of  the  fraction.  The  child 
cannot  re-create  the  toy  he  has  shattered ;  but  let  the  big  cube  be  broken, 
and,  "Oh,  wonder  and  joy!  each  of  its  parts  resembles  the  whole,  the  original  ; 
he  has  not  destroyed,  he  has  not  killed  his  own  joy,  he  has  more,  more  or  the 
same  delightful  playthings.  .  .  .  And,  behold,  when  they  are  put  to- 
gether again — when  the  synthesis  is  made — what  a  wealth  of  new  forms,  what 
a  store  of  new  playthings  grow  as  by  charm  out  of  the  parts.  .  .  .  All  the 
while,  the  child  is  gaining  and  fixing  new  cognitions;  new  relations  of  posi- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  279 

tlon,  direction,  shape,  number,  motion,  life;  acquiring  ever  fuller  and  clearer 
control  of  language,  ever  greater,  higher,  manual  skill,  bringing  ever  more 
unity  into  his  thoughts,  feelings,  and  expressions.  Can  we  fail  to  see,"  adds 
Mr.  Hailmann,  from  whom  these  sentences  on  the  soul  of  Froebel's  gifts  are 
•quoted,  "  that  with  such  playthings,  judiciously  presented  and  managed  by  a 
tnother  whose  wisdom  is  equal  to  her  love,  the  child's  instinct  for  activity, 
Ids  awakening  consciousness  of  power,  grow,  not  in  the  direction  of  destruct- 
iveness  and  cruelty — but  toward  skill,  to  imitate,  to  reproduce,  to  invent." 
'The  fourth  gift  is  again  a  cube  made  of  smaller  oblong  blocks.  The  fifth 
gift,  another  cube  made  of  twenty-seven  smaller  ones,  introduces  the  oblique 
line,  aids  in  the  study  of  angles,  and  later  in  the  comprehension  of  square  and 
•cubic  measures.  The  sixth  gift  is  another  cube  of  twenty-seven  oblongs, 
•designed  to  help  in  building  and  in  arranging  symmetrically.  All  these  im- 
press upon  the  child  the  principles  of  unity  and  universality  in  their  like  and 
Tinlikeness.  These  six  gifts  are  the  most  important ;  but  all  the  others  are 
of  untold  value  in  their  various  uses. 

With  the  seventh  gift  come  what  are  called  tablets,  slices  of  wood  or  of 
thick  cardboard,  from  which  the  element  of  thickness  is  withdrawn  so  that 
•only  the  element  of  surface  is  left,  with  which  the  child  constructs  representa- 
tions or  flat  pictures  or  what  he  may,  and  the  use  of  which  is  thought  to  mark 
.an  important  point  of  his  mental  growth.  The  eighth  gift  is  of  slender 
wooden  sticks  of  various  lengths  and  tints,  for  making  rude  objects  prepara- 
tory to  drawing,  the  shapes  of  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  for  interlacing  into 
spaces  for  the  multiplication  table,  for  acquiring  perception  of  length  apart 
from  breadth  and  thickness,  and  for  similar  uses.  The  ninth  gift  is  of  half 
.and  whole  wire  rings,  for  instruction  in  curves,  leading  to  elementary  science, 
to  botany,  astronomy,  and  geography.  The  tenth  gift  is  of  slates  and  papers 
netted  in  squares,  by  means  of  which  both  drawing  and  proportion  are  taught, 
and  later  the  drawing  of  maps  "in  the  net"  is  thus  made  exceedingly  easy. 
The  eleventh  gift  is  paper  and  cards  to  be  perforated,  a  needle  with  a  handle, 
and  a  pad  to  lay  beneath  in  this  elementary  form  of  drawing.  The  twelfth 
^ift  is  made  of  perforated  cards,  and  silks,  and  needles  for  simple  embroidery. 
The  thirteenth  is  of  papers  folded  and  cut  in  many  ways  that  produce  inter- 
Besting  designs  and  afford  the  delighted  child  the  lawful  opportunity  to  use 
scissors,  thus  turning  his  mischievous  propensities  into  charming  interplay  of 
fancy.  The  fourteenth  gift  is  strips  of  colored  paper  to  be  woven  together 
in  any  pattern,  wonderfully  exciting  to  the  inventive  powers.  The  fifteenth 
is  of  hard  wood  slats  which  are  to  be  interlaced  into  all  sorts  of  figures.  The 
sixteenth  is  of  slender  slats  joined  together,  representing  innumerable  com- 
binations of  angles.  The  seventeenth  is  of  colored  paper  strips,  eight  or  ten 


28o  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

inches  long,  to  be  folded  lengthwise  and  bent  into  shape,  according  to  rules 
given  with  them.  The  eighteenth  is  again  of  paper  in  squares,  triangles, 
and  circles,  out  of  which  many  other  objects  are  formed.  The  nineteenth  is 
of  pointed  wires,  corks,  and  peas — the  ends  of  the  wires  to  be  united  in  the 
corks,  or  in  the  peas  soaked  and  softened,  and  so  erected  into  skeleton  de- 
signs. The  twentieth  gift  is  of  potter's  clay,  with  a  modeling  board  and 
tools. 

Of  all  these  gifts,  perhaps  none  are  made  more  useful  than  the  last ;  for 
it  can  be  made  to  take  the  place  of  almost  all  the  others.  Of  clay,  the  child, 
delightedly  can  create  the  ball,  the  cylinder,  and  later  on  express  his  percep- 
tion of  all  other  objects,  and  even  can  approach  the  threshold  of  art,  although, 
all  unaware  and  as  unconscious  as  Raphael's  two  cherubs  that  overlook  the  bat- 
tlements of  heaven.  And  in  the  modeling,  a  use  of  the  hands  has  been  ac- 
quired hardly  to  be  had  in  any  other  way,  an  acquaintance  with  natural 
objects  and  laws,  and  an  opportunity  for  the  expansion  into  ideal  artistic  life 
for  those  in  whom  the  artistic  nature  predominates.  We  are  told  that  "the 
moral  effect  of  this  occupation  is  special,  the  yielding  nature  of  the  clay  seems 
to  develop  conscious  power,  to  prophesy  the  dominion  over  material  nature 
commanded  in  the  morning-hymn  of  creation  that  begins  the  Bible;  while 
the  indestructibility  reveals  the  inexorableness  of  law ;  truths  which  are  op- 
posite but  not  contradictory." 

The  uses  of  all  these  gifts  can  be  grouped  into  exercises  with  solids,  with 
planes,  with  lines,  with  points ;  and  with  their  employment  comes  a  series  of 
physical  games,  such  as  the  drill,  singing,  ball-throwing,  a  change  from 
manual  to  vocal  work,  and  the  rest  to  be  found  in  calling  upon  other  organs 
and  muscles. 


School  Another  World. 

That  school  is  important  for  the  evolution  of  the  social  nature  is  appar- 
ent. "He  who  learns  to  swim  must  go  in  the  water"  ;  he  who  is  to  be  happy 
or  useful  in  the  world  must  mingle  with  his  fellows ;  and  so  in  his  first  social 
experience  the  child  should  have  a  society  as  near  perfection  as  it  can  be 
made,  a  society  of  the  innocent,  a  society  where  personal  liberty  is  supreme> 
where  each  has  all  his  rights  and  chances  and  no  interference  from  another. 
"Such  a  society  does  all  it  can  to  aid  each  member  in  the  attainment  of  his 
individual  ends,  while  he,  in  return,  finds  his  highest  aims  in  common  pur- 
poses; such  a  society  thanks  the  child  cordially  for  his  successful  activity,  and 
he  gratefully  acknowledges  as  his  greatest  triumphs  those  in  whose  attain- 
ment he  played  only  a  part ;  such  a  society  enjoys  the  result  even  of  his  in- 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  281 

dividual  activity  with  full,  unfeigned  pleasure,  and  he  again  soon  learns  to 
seek  his  greatest  joy  in  £he  joy  of  others,  his  highest  ideals  in  the  welfare  of 
the  whole.  ...  In  the  kindergarten  Froebel  would  provide  a  pedagogic 
society  which  answers  to  these  requirements.  Here  the  child  finds  a  number 
of  others  of  similar  age,  as  nearly  his  equals  in  power,  capacity,  and  scope  as 
individuality  will  permit;  a  number  of  social  elements  with  whom  he  can- 
fully  sympathize,  and  who  sympathize  fully  with  him  in  all  manifestations 
of  growing  life,  among  whom  he  finds  nothing  inexplicable,  unattainable,  un- 
enjoyable ;  playmates,  associates,  fellow-beings  in  embryo,  with  whom  he  can 
assimilate,  coalesce  organically  without  giving  up  his  self.  Here  the  child 
becomes  familiar  with  the  high  value  of  union  with  others.  Heretofore,  self 
was  the  main  center  of  his  desires;  now  he  begins  to  find  aims  beyond  self; 
the  germs  of  love,  of  devotion,  of  a  widening  humanity  swell  in  his  soul  and 
burst  into  life ;  he  is  aroused  to  a  consciousness  of  his  worth  as  a  part  of  the 
whole. ' ' 

At  school,"  then,  it  is  evident  the  child  is  stimulated  by  others,  pleased 
with  companionship,  and  all  his  social  instincts — that  is,  his  relations  to  his 
kind — are  developed  at  the  same  time  with  the  rest  of  his  better  nature.  Here 
the  mental  work,  or  sport  if  you  please,  is  for  fifteen  minutes,  and  then  the 
physical  game,  the  song,  the  dance,  the  pretty  play,  is  taken  up  for  change 
and  relief  for  as  long  a  time.  The  child  sees  that  it  is  a  privilege  to  join  the 
game,  and  that  it  is  punishment  to  be  unemployed. 

In  building  with  the  blocks,  the  natural  destructive  element  is  restrained 
by  the  obligation  of  taking  down  instead  of  knocking  down  any  and  every 
structure,  and  of  putting  things  away  in  place.  The  learning  of  the  alpha- 
bet, which  was  once  a  dreary  effort  of  memory,  becomes  a  pleasure  when  the 
letters  are  fashioned  with  the  sticks  of  the  eighth  gift ;  the  first  group  of  the 
letter  I,  and  the  figure  i,  being  made  of  the  single  stick,  the  next  of  X,  V, 
L,  by  two  sticks,  and  so  on. 

Among  the  effects  of  this  system  of  preparatory  education,  at  the  end  of 
which  the  child  is  found  to  know  thoroughly  much  that  used  to  be  taught 
through  that  wearisom,e  memorizing  which  makes  the  world  a  desert  for  the 
time,  are  many  purely  moral  gains.  Thus  the  child  has  been  given,  first,  per- 
ception of  absolute  truth  and  of  reverence  for  the  fixed  laws  of  the  universe 
in  the  mere  handling  of  his  blocks,  and,  later,  love  for  his  little  fellow-mortals, 
and  the  spirit  of  true  democracy. 

The  old  system  of  mnemonics  may  have  its  value,  the  mechanical  and 
the  ingenious  systems,  such  as  that  artificial  way  by  which  we  of  an  older 
growth  were  taught  to  remember,  for  instance,  the  year  of  the  death  of  Charle- 
magne, 814,  because  the  figure  8  resembles  the  hour-glass,  the  symbol  of  war; 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  - 

the  figure  4  a  ploughshare,  the  symbol  of  peace.  But  here  all  the  child's 
knowledge  is  firsthand  knowledge,  that  has  come  out  of  his  own  experience, 
and  is  thus  a  part  of  himself  and  not  to  be  forgotten.  And  with  all  the  rest 
of  his  moral  gain  he  has  learned  that  self-control  which  calls  into  exercise 
those  among  the  higher  brain-centers. 

All  his  toys,  while  they  have  taught  him  inductive  reasoning,  have  been 
archetypes  of  nature ;  in  the  ball  he  has  the  earth  and  stars,  the  ideal  of  per. 
fection  in  shape  and  motion ;  in  the  cylinder  he  has  growth  in  trees  and  in 
animals,  and  further  along  he  finds  there  the  foundation  of  pottery;  in  the 
cube  he  has  the  mineral  kingdom,  crystallization,  and  by  and  by  architecture; 
he  himself  in  any  childish  experiment  of  play  may  see  salt  crystallize  into 
cubes,  and  alum  into  octahedrons ;  everywhere  he  has  been  led  upward  in  the 
way  in  which  only  geometry  and  geometrical  forms  lead ;  and  all  without  a 
text-book  he  has  been  made  mastei  of  much  that  text-books  give. 


In  Visiting  a  Kindergarten. 

One  can  find  by  personal  observation  the  value  of  the  Froebel  system 
much  more  exactly  than  it  can  be  comprehended  by  reading.  If  one  visits  a 
kindergarten  watches  the  children  building  any  object  with  their  blocks, 
each  one  alone,  and  each  one  individualizing  his  work ;  hears  the  teacher  tell 
them  all  a  story  concerning  that  object  afterward,  helping  them  by  the  details 
of  the  story  to  see  if  they  have  done  their  work  correctly;  listens  to  them  then 
singing  the  song  appropriate  to  the  exercise ;  if  one  watches  them  unite  and 
contribute  to  build  a  village,  learning  the  while  a  new  lesson  of  association ; 
or  if  one  only  follows  them  in  their  playtime,  one  will  still  observe  that  with 
•every  chance  for  individual  effort  there  is  always  the  joy  of  united  effort,  of 
co-ordination  without  subordination,  all  in  an  atmosphere  of  joyous  love  and 
sympathy. 

"Do  you  not  see,"  asks  Hailmann,  "the  gentle,  steady  hnpulse  for 
growth,  the  abundance  of  food  for  development,  whicli  each  and  every  in- 
dividuality gains  from  this  intercourse  with  nature  ?  Do  you  not  see  that  the 
full  and  respectful  consideration,  which  the  little  society  awards  to  true  merit 
in  every  direction,  teaches  these  little  artists,  discoverers,  inventors,  thinkers, 
to  feel  and  to  appreciate?  .  .  .  Do  you  not  see  that  it  is  not  in  the 
power  of  a  single  home,  no  matter  how  great  its  wealth,  material  and  mental, 
to  supply  the  mighty  influence  for  all  sided  growth,  individual  as  well  as 
social,  which  is  wielded  by  the  free  and  full  appreciation  of  individual  worth 
and  the  just  and  moderate  demands  upon  individual  powers  on  the  part  of  a 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  283 

society  of  equals  ?  And  do  you  not  feel  that  it  would  be  a  crime  to  keep  the 
.growing  human  being  from  this  influence,  when  his  nature  calls  for  it?  Do 
you  not  feel  that  it  would  be  sin  to  let  it  be  exerted  without  proper  guidance?" 

Physically,  morally,  intellectually,  and  artistically  the  methods  of  the 
Froebel  system,  it  must  be  seen,  we  think,  are  those  which  will  soonest  lift 
the  child  to  those  levels  from  which  the  great,  perfect  race  to  come  shall  take 
its  departure. 

When  children  emerge  from  the  kindergarten  their  whole  being  is  in  a 
condition  which  renders  them  susceptible  to  the  loftiest  sort  of  instruction. 
"Their  faculties  and  their  conscience  are  all  alert,  and  they  are  ready  to  take 
liold  of  the  great  world  of  knowledge  after  the  technical  fashion  and  make  it 
their  own.  Much  yet  remains  that  they  may  be  taught  experimentally,  as, 
for  example,  in  the  woods  the  growth  of  trees,  on  the  shore  the  structure  of 
shell  and  sponge  and  seaweed,  in  the  open  country  the  movement  of  stars 
and  planets.  "What  shall  be  attempted,"  asked  Mrs.  Hopkins,  one  of  the 
supervisors  of  the  Boston  schools,  "for  the  child  who  comes  from  the  kinder- 
garten all  ready  to  learn,  but  as  yet  unacquainted  with  books?  I  answer,  all, 
and  more  than  all,  that  may  be  found  in  elementary  treatises  in  every  de- 
partment of  natural  science  may  be  given  him  in  object-lessons,  in  a  compara- 
tively short  time,  with  what  is  of  vastly  more  importance — an  enthusiastic 
love  for  these  studies,  a  habit  of  careful  observation,  and  a  training  of  the 
senses  which  shall  be  a  great  addition  to  his  power  in  science,  art,  or  practical 
life.  He  may  at  the  same  time  lay  up  in  his  memory  the  ground  facts  of 
written  and  spoken  language  and  mathematics.  Then,  by  natural  stages,  he 
will  turn  with  avidity  to  records  of  the  observations  of  others,  until  a  concep- 
tion of  arrangement,  generalization,  and  inference  will  grow  up  within  him, 
the  dawn  of  a  higher  epoch  in  the  harmonious  education  of  the  mind." 

Mrs.  Hopkins  goes  on  to  tell  of  a  year's  work  with  a  class  of  children 
some  ten  years  of  age,  in  which  for  history  they  studied  that  of  the  United 
States  with  Mr.  Higginson's  text-book  and  the  help  of  the  pictures  in  Loss- 
ing's  Field-books  and  Catlin's  North  American  Indians;  Dickens'  Child's 
History  of  England,  with  an  examination  of  many  illustrative  prints ;  and  a 
good  portion  of  Greek  and  Roman  mythology.  With  this,  they  studied  also 
the  geography  of  the  United  States,  drew  maps,  made  imaginary  journeys, 
and  traded  products  of  the  different  portions  of  the  country  till  they  were 
tolerably  familiar  with  the  whole  of  it.  Instead  of  a  drill  in  grammar,  they 
were  shown  that  they  already  knew  grammar  in  an  elementary  way  and  could 
parse  simple  sentences ;  while  they  had  exercises  in  dictation  and  composi- 
tion with  constant  reading  and  spelling  and  recitations  of  poetry.  In  arith- 
TH  -  "ic  they  mastered  fractions,  decimals,  compound  numbers,  and  the  metric 


284  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

system,  having  treated  all  these  subjects  as  variations  of  the  rules  of  numera- 
tion, addition,  and  subtraction.  In  botany  they  analyzed  flowers,  learned 
the  properties  of  tendrils,  the  propagation  of  the  orchid,  the  multiplication  of 
cells,  studied  forest  trees,  a  first  book  in  zoology,  besides  reading  several  ele- 
mentary books  on  natural  science,  and  making  drawings  of  birds,  all  as  if  a 
new  world  were  opening  to  them,  and  with  delighted  and  eager  apprehension 
They  drew,  under  a  special  teacher,  learned  to  talic  simple  French  with  a 
native  teacher,  could  play  a  French  game,  and  in  German  could  read  Grimm's 
Tales.  In  all  of  this,  learning  seemed  to  be  simply  a  delight. 

For  example,  says  Mrs.  Hopkins,  in  that  invaluable  little  book  for  mothers 
and  teachers, "How  Shall  My  Child  Be  Taught?"  "One  day  last  spring,  to 
reward  those  who  had  braved  the  storm  to  come,  I  took  a  dry  account  from  a 
compendium  of  general  history,  and  attempted  to  teach  in  an  hour  or  two  the 
lesson  of  the  Crusades.  The  children  had  had  but  a  glimpse  of  the  matter, 
in  connection  with  their  lessons  in  English  history,  the  previous  year.  Read- 
ing to  them  in  some  such  way  as  I  have  described  (that  is,  interrupted  with 
questions  and  answers  and  brief  conversations,  using  the  skeleton  of  the  book, 
and  making,  as  it  were,  an  impromptu  translation  of  the  text),  writing  on  the 
board  a  schedule  of  names  and  dates  as  they  occurred  in  the  reading,  in  order 
to  make  the  outline  clear  before  their  eyes ;  tracing  the  localities  and  move- 
ments on  the  map;  reading  verbatim  passages  from  'The  Talisman,'  also 
showing  with  it  the  engravings  from  a  rare  illustrated  edition  of  Scott,  and 
with  pictures  and  a  little  of  the  text  from  'Ivanhoe,'  I  found  at  the  close  of 
the  session  that,  in  the  glow  cf  the  whole  theme  upon  the  clear  mirror  of  their 
minds,  they  had  received  a  comprehensive  as  well  as  a  particular  knowledge 
of  the  subject,  a  perfectly  orderly  outline  of  its  facts,  a  vivid  apprehension  of 
its  purpose,  philosophy,  connections,  and  results,  as  well  as  a  strong  scenic 
impression  of  the  drama  of  the  whole  epoch." 

But  not  only  the  method  of  study,  but  the  matter  given  in  the  desultory 
reading  of  the  child  is  a  subject  demanding  serious  consideration.  This  is  no 
new  idea ;  for,  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago,  Plato  said,  in  substance, 
that  we  must  be  scrupulous  about  the  stories  our  children  have ;  in  them  there 
must  be  nothing  derogatory  to  the  dignity  of  the  gods ;  they  must  not  mislead 
by  false  statement ;  they  must  not  present  the  characters  of  the  great  in  an 
unworthy  light ;  they  must  inculcate  courage  and  self-control ;  and  they  must 
be  written  in  a  simple  style. 

We  see  now  how  much  depends  upon  the  teacher,  and  how  vital  it  is  that 
the  mind  which  imparts  should  be  full  and  strong  and  replete  with  overflow- 
ing thoughts,  and  how  unfortunate  it  is  if  resort  to  books  and  statistics  and 
dry  repetition  itself  is  found  necessary. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  285 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  thinking  that  the  teacher  of  the  advanced  classes 
of  later  years  has  the  higher  rank;  but  when  we  more  fully  understand  the 
office  of  the  teacher  of  these  early  years,  see  that  a  whole  generation  is  clay  in 
her  hands,  that  her  work  "covers  the  most  impressible  period  of  1  fe,  it  de- 
mands the  most  earnest  enthusiasm,  the  clearest  wisdom,  and  the  rncst  varied 
experience  in  one  who  undertakes  it ;  in  particular  it  requires  intense  sym- 
pathy with  children  in  their  tastes,  in  their  outlook  and  ways  of  thinking,  as 
well  as  in  the  singleness  of  their  moral  nature ;  it  requires,  moreover,  a  capa- 
city of  child-likeness  which  is  the  attribute  only,  of  harmonious  maturity  or 
of  genius. 

"It  is  the  unspeakable  gift  to  become  as  little  children.  .  .  .  Sympa- 
thy— not  indifference,  antagonism,  or  hostility — should  be  the  medium  of  the 
teacher's  influence.  Desire  for  the  pupil's  advancement  will  awaken  desire  in 
him  for  that  end,  courage  arouse  courage,  determination  evoke  determina- 
tion; joy  in  the  teacher's  heart  will  communicate  its  stimulus  and  lead  to  vic- 
tory ,  enthusiasm  will  kindle  enthusiasm  and  create  a  vital  atmosphere  in 
which  the  child's  being  expands  almost  unconsciously.  Intelligence  should 
precede  memory ;  imagination  should  accompany  recollection ;  nature  never 
set  a  child  to  learn  by  rote ;  those  things  which  must  finally  be  subjected  to 
an  act  of  memory  should  be  approached  as  a  discovery,  as  the  symbol  of 
ideas.  Respect  for  the  common-sense  of  mankind,  faith  in  its  formulated  ex- 
periences will  grow  out  of  an  intelligent  attention  to  results  of  thought  and 
conduct,  will  be  accepted  as  guides  for  action." 

A  famous  instructor  some  years  ago,  who  said  that  he  spent  his  days 
leading  jackasses  up  Parnassus,  would  not  be  of  much  use  to-day  in  this  view 
of  his  duty  and  this  exemplification  of  his  love  for  his  work.  Another  re- 
quirement of  the  teacher  in  the  modern  treatment  of  children  is  the  ability  to 
exalt  and  increase  the  strength  of  the  will.  "A  culture  of  the  will  is  a  neces- 
sity of  right  culture  for  body,  mind,  and,  soul,"  continues  Mrs.  Hopkins  in 
the  wise  and  wonderful  pages  from  which  extracts  have  been  given  here.  "It 
must  be  remembered  that  the  fundamental  law  of  growth  by  exercise  is  as 
applicable  to  the  will  as  to  any  other  power  of  man  or  nature.  The  will  must 
be  kept  active  in  the  child  by  leading  him  to  determine  and  work  for  himself. 
If  he  is  driven  blindly  to  the  accomplishment  of  the  task  set  for  him,  he  will 
never  develop  the  power  to  set  tasks  for  himself  and  put  himself  to  work, 
which  is  his  only  chance  for  real  achievement  of  either  power  or  result.  Give 
motive  and  stimulus  sufficient  to  arouse  the  will  until  it  commands  the  facul- 
ties successfully.  It  is  immediate,  clear,  and  decisive  action  which  best 
defines  the  mental  and  moral  ideas,  executes  theii  purposes,  and  evolves  the 
will-power.  Children  should  not  be  advised  when  they  are  competent  tc  ad- 


(286) 


HELPLESS  MORSEL  OF  HUMAlSUJjy. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  287 

vise  themselves,  but  thrown  upon  their  own  resources  for  determination  of 
aim  and  means  as  far  as  possible." 


John  Wesley's  Mother. 

The  mother  of  John  Wesley  would  have  disagreed  with  this,  for  she  once 
declared  that  the  first  thing  to  be  done  is  to  conquer  the  will,  and  while  the 
improvement  of  the  understanding  is  a  work  of  time,  the  subjection  of  the 
will  is  something  to  be  done  at  once,  and  the  sooner  the  better.  But  if  Mrs. 
Wesley  were  unwise  here,  she  had  some  regulations  in  relation  to  her  children 
that  were  worthy  of  remembrance.  It  had  been  observed  in  her  family,  she 
wrote,  that  cowardice  and  fear  of  punishment  often  led  children  to  lie  until 
the  act  became  habitual ;  she  therefore  made  laws  that  whoever  confessed 
his  fault  should  not  be  whipped,  that  no  child  should  be  punished  twice  for 
the  same  fault,  or  upbraided  for  it  again ;  that  every  instance  of  obedience 
or  self-denial  should  be  praised  or  rewarded ;  and  that  good  intentions  should 
be  respected.  Certainly  by  these  rules,' or  in  spite  of  them,  Mrs.  Wesley  had 
a  measure  of  success  with  her  children.  There  are  some  things  in  the  old 
methods,  it  would  seem,  as  useful  and  as  good  as  anything  in  the  new.  But, 
on  the  whole,  the  old  methods  treated  a  child  as  if  he  were  a  piece  of  mechan- 
ism ;  the  new  methods  treat  him  as  if  he  were  a  living,  growing,  and  unfold- 
ing soul.  The  old  methods  attend  upon  that  which  he  knows;  the  new 
methods  upon  that  which  he  is,  regarding  chiefly  that  most  marvelous  of  all 
the  phenomena  of  life,  the  capacity  for  growth,  and  seeking  to  bring  about  an 
intellectual  and  spiritual  tran substantiation  of  the  facts  of  the  universe.  By 
this  new  method,  if  we  had  not  alreadv  a  soul,  we  should  develop  one. 


Siojd. 

Perhaps  as  potent  a  factor  as  any  other  in  the  new  methods  of  rearing- 
children  is  the  adoption  of  technical  instruction  or  manual  training,  in  the 
manner  commonly  known  as  slojd.  Experts  are  still  discussing  whether  we 
shall  leave  dead  languages  and  go  forward  to  that  which  is  new,  and  whether 
the  moods  and  declensions  and  analyses  of  grammar  shall  deaden  and  stultify 
the  nervous  centers  much  longer,  whether  arithmetic  shall  be  simplified  and 
much  of  it  abbreviated  and  passed  over  to  algebra,  whether  we  shall  leave  the 
old  wasteful  ways,  wasteful  as  regards  life,  time,  and  intelligence ;  but  they 
are  beginning  to  be  of  one  mind  as  to  slojd.  No  such  advance  in  mentality 
can  be  imagined  as  that  god-like  one  which  demands  that  the  child  shall  not 


(-38) 


THE  CHILD  WILL  HAVE  A  LOVE  OF  WORK. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  28$ 

only  observe  and  describe  an  object,  but  that  he  shall  create  it.  The  handling 
of  tools,  the  manufacture  of  articles,  however  tririing,  begets  a  habit  of  men- 
tal precision,  of  concentration,  of  clarity,  of  truth,  that  is  precious;  it  breaks 
up  brain-destroying  monotony,  gives  relief  from  sedentary  occupation,  and 
vitalizes  the  effect  and  result  of  study.  The  ethical  influence,  too,  of  this 
manual  training  is  immense ;  the  child  will  have  a  love  of  work,  will  have  ac- 
quired dexterity,  patience,  perseverance,  practicality,  invention,  force  of  will, 
command  of  body,  will  have  seen  the  beauty  and  virtue  and  need  of  order; 
the  self-conceit  of  the  merely  glib  memory  will  receive  a  paralyzing  shock  in 
the  presence  of  the  clear  intellectual  vision  trained  to  exactitude  and  percep- 
tion of  right  relations ;  and  that  will  introduce  true  democracy  which  shows 
vivid  intelligence,  refined  habits,  a  cultured  family  line,  sharing  the  stains  of 
the  hands  of  toil. 

There  are  economic  views  of  the  benefit  of  slojd,  moreover;  it  has  been 
said,  owing  to  the  tyranny  of  trades-unions,  that  an  American  child  can  learn 
a  trade  only  in  the  penitentiary,  yet  any  finished  student  in  manual  training 
—it  being  remembered,  too,  that  the  intellectual  training  is  coincident — has 
learned  the  use  of  tools  so  that  he  needs  but  a  few  months  to  make  himself 
master  of  any  trade  he  will.  But  there  is  a  greater  economic  view  of  the 
matter  in  observation  of  the  effect  of  the  system  on  the  child's  brain,  body, 
and  soul. 

But  when  school  and  lessons  and  master  are  done  with,  or  very  nearly 
so,  the  result  of  all  that  has  been  done  is  to  be  evident  in  the  home.  It  will 
then  be  seen,  if  knowledge  of  the  eccentricity  of  Mercury's  orbit,  if  the  skill 
to  calculate  eclipses,  and  acquaintance  with  the  most  ancient  or  the  most 
modern  tongue,  has  developed  faithfulness  in  the  young  student's  orbit,  if  the 
moral  and  emotional  qualities  have  been  as  well  rounded  and  perfected  as  the 
mental  ones,  and  if  an  intellectual  monster  has  been  produced,  instead  of  a 
loving  and  sympathetic  being.  Surely  the  answer  will  be  a  favorable  one,  if 
from  the  beginning  the  mother  has  given  her  child  that  full  sympathy  which 
creates  both  return  of  sympathy  and  unfettered  confidence;  has  held  before  it 
the  standards  of  honor  and  of  truth,  has  taught  it  the  joy  of  brotherhood,  the 
love  of  humanity,  and  far  from  being  the  tyrannical  ruler  of  days  and  doings, 
has  been  the  sharer  of  studies,  hopes,  fears,  joys,  and  dreams;  and  if  the 
father  has  been  in  himself  the  fulfillment  of  his  child's  ideal  of  him 

The  daughter  of  that  mother,  of  the  mother  who  deserves  her,  will  not 
have  been  trained  merely  to  books,  to  the  pencil,  the  piano,  belles-lettres,  but 
to  all  the  virtues  of  home  as  well.  She  will  know  the  kitchen  arts,  at  least 
elementarily;  she  will  be  able  to  take  the  charge  of  a  younger  child's  ward- 
robe off  the  mother's  hands,  the  care  of  the  drawing-room,  the  arrangement 


293 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


THE    LITTLE    FACE    LIES    NEAR    HER    OWN. 

of  flowers,  of  table  decorations;  and  she  will  know  enough  of  the  arts  of  the 
hospital,  of  bed-making,  of  bandaging,  of  the  dressing  of  wounds,  not  to  be 
half  heart-broken  at  her  inability  to  give  relief  to  the  suffering  whom  she 
loves.  She  will  remember  that  we  are  all  alike  the  children  of  life ;  she  will 
be  a  sister  to  the  beggar  within  her  gates ;  she  will  be  incapable  of  small  de- 
ceits. And  the  son  of  that  mother  will  reverence  her  as  the  visible  expres- 
sion to  him  of  heavenly  power  on  earth,  will  have  learned  from  her  how  to 
famish  his  evil  passions,  to  nourish  his  loftier  ones,  will  have  acquired  self- 
control,  self-abnegation,  the  strength  of  his  father,  the  purity  of  his  sister. 
And  if  there  is  any  further  beauty  to  be  known  than  the  relations  of  such  a 
mother  and  her  son,  of  such  a  father  and  his  daughter,  it  is  to  some  other 
sphere  that  we  must  go  to  find  it. 


At  the  Hurricane  Light. 

The  children  of  the  Hurricane  Light  are  not  examples  of  the  kindergar- 
ten methods — rather  of  Mrs.  Wesley's  plan  than  of  anything  else.     But  I 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  291 

think  that  neither  Jack  nor  Emeline  would  have  been  as  fine  characters  if 
they  had  not  been  reared  on  the  true  kindergarten  principle,  that  of  love. 

The  summer  hotel  stood  alone  on  a  point  of  rock  in  the  sea,  the  narrow 
peninsula  that  led  back  to  the  mainland,  washed  over  by  frozen  tides  till,  long 
before  midwinter,  there  was  no  peninsula  to  be  seen,  only  something  like  a 
broad  floe  of  broken,  tumbled  blocks  of  ice  full  of  crevasses  and  water-streaks 
and  danger,  although  there  was  a  sort  of  way  along  it.  But  the  father  of 
the  children  staying  there  had  some  idea  of  frosting  the  malaria  out  of  their 
blood,  and  thought  it  would  be  a  novel  experience,  doing  them  good  in  many 
ways,  while  giving  him  the  very  chance  he  wanted  for  investigating  some 
scientific  matters  in  relation  to  ice  and  snow,  germ-life  and  sea-currents. 
And  so  he  had  proposed,  as  long  as  somebody  must  stay  in  the  hotel  where 
they  had  passed  the  summer,  to  keep  it  from  burning  down,  as  summer  hotels 
are  apt  to  do  if  left  vacant,  that  he  would  remain  and  attend  to  his  studies 
there. 

If  Clara  had  been  older  she  would  have  seen  a  world  of  poetry  in  the  un- 
usual life;  for,  when  they  were  established  in  the  big  dining-hall,  nothing 
could  be  quainter.  Their  father  had  put  a  heater  in  the  basement,  and  the 
air  from  that,  together  with  the  fires  in  three  huge  stoves  and  in  the  open 
chimney,  gave  the  room  a  summer  warmth.  At  the  lower  end  was  the 
kitchen  stove ;  and  here  were  temporary  shelves  for  the  bright  tins  and  the  pans 
of  milk  skimmed  by  the  pretty  Swedish  girls,  whose  long  yellow  braids  made 
one  think  the  serving-maids  of  the  middle  ages  looked  just  that  way.  On 
one  side  of  the  room  the  windows  were  full  of  Aunt  Marion's  plants,  and  on 
the  other  were  a  tall  book-case,  a  secretary  for  papa's  papers,  scientific  tables, 
trays,  and  cabinets,  and  his  charts  upon  the  wall ;  and  at  the  upper  end  was 
mamma's  table  and  easel  and  work  basket,  and  the  piano  and  mirror  and  open 
fire,  soft  rugs  and  lounges  and  arm-chairs.  And,  as  Aunt  Marion  said,  it 
was  the  old  hall  of  the  primitive  castle  over  again,  with  the  lady  on  her  dais 
at  one  end,  and  the  maids  and  their  spinning  at  the  other.  Their  sleeping- 
rooms  were  just  overhead ;  but  they  were  in  no  hurry  to  go  to  them  when, 
through  the  wide  windows  and  through  the  glass  doors  on  every  side,  they 
could  see  the  sun  set  over  the  sea  and  the  moon  rise  over  the  land,  and  dark- 
ness gathering  on  the  waters,  and  storms  coming  up,  and  now  and  then  dis- 
tant sails  slipping  by  like  dreams,  catching  the  sparkle  of  the  light-house 
lamp  that  for  an  instant  brought  them  into  life  and  light. 

After  all,  the  days — however  long  they  may  have  been  to  Aunt  Marion — 
went  by  without  seeming  of  appreciable  length  at  all  to  the  children,  what 
with  lessons,  and  practicing  and  watching  papa's  experiments,  and  climbing; 
about  the  broken  ice  near  the  house,  and  skating  on  one  of  the  broad  piazzas 


292  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

that  had  been  flooded  and  frozen  for  them.  And  presently,  indeed,  the  days 
were  far  too  short  for  Clara's  and  Nell's  mysterious  preparations  for  Christ- 
inas, which  at  last  was  close  at  hand. 

When  this  all  too  sudden  twilight  came,  Tom  and  Clara  used  often  to 
conjecture  about  the  children  over  at  the  Hurricane  Light — the  great  white 
tower  that  loomed  over  the  blue  sea,  the  tower  from  whose  summit  they  had 
so  many  times  seen  the  light  tremble  and  grow  strong  over  the  purpling 
waters  of  summer  eves,  with  its  narrow  wooden  causeway  across  waters 
always  foaming  between  the  tower  and  the  rest  of  the  island  rock.  They 
fancied  all  sorts  of  things  concerning  them ;  for  they  had  heard  there  were 
two  children  there — little  Jack  and  Emeline — with  their  father,  the  sturdy 
keeper  of  the  light,  and  his  assistant,  Dan.  But  that  was  all  they  knew. 

"Do  you  suppose  there  is  any  mother?"  asked  Will,  with  his  nose  flat- 
tened on  the  glass,  as  they  watched  for  the  light. 

' ' No, "  said  Clara.     "Of  course  not. ' ' 

"Gh!     How  can  they  do  without  a  mother?"' 

"I  don't  see,  I'm  sure.  But  Emeline  takes  care  of  their  clothes,  I  guess; 
and  the  man  helps  her  do  the  work  and  lifts  the  heavy  things.  And  some- 
times— I  shouldn't  wonder — she  sews  at  the  little  windows  and  looks  out  and 
thinks  about  how  many  children  there  are  here.  And  perhaps  she  watches 
for  our  lights  just  as  we  do  for  hers,  and  wishes  we  could  go  over  and  play 
there  of  an  afternoon.  Aud  sometimes  her  father  lets  her  go  up  with  him 
when  he  lights  the  lights.  There  they  are  now !  Red  and  green,  ruby  and 
emerald — just  a  blaze!  Oh!  isn't  it  like  Providence?  Sure  to  be  there  the 
moment  the  twilight  thickens;  always  there;  I  never  thought  about  it  in  the 
summer." 

"Yes,"  said  Tom.  "And  don't  you  know,  I'd  rather  keep  a  light-house 
than  do  anything  else  on  earth;  or  water  either" — stopping  to  consider  if  a 
light-house  belonged  to  earth  or  water. 

"What!  Rather  than  be  doctors,  like  papa  and  Uncle  John,  or  be  in 
business,  or  preach  "- 

"Anybody  can  preach.  Aunt  Marion's  always  preaching;  and  besides, 
I've  heard  mamma  say  a  person  should  be  sure  he  can  preach  well  before 
he  takes  charge  of  folks'  souls.  But  the  light-housekeeper  saves  men's 
bodies  every  time  he  lights  his  lamps."  And  Tom  felt  like  a  preacher  him- 
self. 

"What  would  happen,"  asked  Will,  anxiously,  hugging  his  kitten  closer, 
"if  he  didn't  light  the  lamps?" 

"The  ships  at  sea  wouldn't  see  it,  and  they  wouldn't  know  where  they 
were.  They  wouldn't  say  'Hallo!  Here's  old  Hurricane  Light!  Nowwe've 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


293 


THE    HURRICANE    LIGHT-HOUSE. 


Wreckers'  Reef  to  keep  clear  of  on  the  larboard  and  Drowned  Man's  Ledge 
on  the  port,  and  the  Tushes  to  give  a  wide  berth  to  ' 

"Larboard  and  port  mean  the  same  thing." 

"Oh!  you  know  too  much,  Clara!"  continued  Tom.  "It  doesn't  make 
any  odds.  The  ships  know  there  are  all  these  dangers  'round  the  spot  where 
this  light  burns,  and  they  luff  and  bear  away." 

"And  so,  if  the  light  shouldn't  burn,"  began  Will,  tearfully— 

"And  so,  if  the  light  shouldn't  burn,"  said  Tom,  solemnly,  "first  a  red 
and  then  a  green  flash,  first  a  red  and  then  a  green,  all  night  long,  the  coast 
would  be  strewn  with  wrecks  from  Maine  to  Mexico.  I  heard  papa  say  so." 

"Do  you  suppose, "  asked  Nell,  pushing  Will  aside  for  her  own  better 
view,  "that  Jack  and  Emeline  ever  go  ashore?" 

"No.  Everything's  laid  in  for  the  winter;  and  so  they  don't  need  to 
go, "  said  Tom.  "And  they  couldn't  go  easily  if  they  did,  papa  says.  It's 
all  anybody  can  do  to  get  over  from  here." 

"They  could  come  across  that  strip  of  water  in  their  boats." 

"Now  look  here!     That  strip  of  water  is  black  as  ink.     A    man   might 


294  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

maybe.  But  what  boy,  the  size  of  Jack,  would  be  crawling  down  those  slip- 
pery sides  of  the  icy  rock  to  get  into  a  swinging  boat  sliding  away  from 
under?1' 

'I  would,"  said  Will. 

"Folks  always  would  do  what  they  can't, "  said  Tom,  with  grandeur.  "I 
guess  Jack  and  Emelme  don't  do  it  very  often.  I  wouldn't." 

"And  if  they  could,"  said  Clara,  "and  could  get  on  our  headland,  the  ice 
changes  with  every  tide,  and  the  blocks  are  too  big  to  climb  over,  and  there's 
deep  water  in  between.  If  Uncle  John  does  come  to-morrow,  I  don't  see  how 
he'll  ever  get  out,  or  ever  get  back/' 

"Uncle  John,"  said  Tom,  "can  do  everything." 

"I  should  think  Aunt  Marion  would  be  so  worried!" 

"Do  you  suppose  Jack  and  Emeline  will  hang  up  their  stockings?"  asked 
Will,  not  interested  in  sentimental  matters. 

"How  is  Santa  Glaus  going  to  get  out  therewith  his  reindeers?"  answered 
Tom,  loftily. 

"Why,  of  course  they  will,"  said  Clara.  "Emeline  has  knit  Jack  some- 
mittens,  and  Jack  " 

"Do  you  suppose,"  said  Nell,  uthat  they  know  there's  Tom  and  Clara 
and  Will  and  Russ  and  me  here?" 

"Perhaps  they  don't  call  us  Tom  and  Clara.  Perhaps  they  call  us  Dick 
and  Bell,  just  as  we  call  them." 

"I  tell  you,"  said  Will.  "Don't  you  think  it  would  be  nice  if  we  made 
some  Christmas  for  them?" 

"But  we  couldn't  get  it  out  to  them;  don't  you  know?"  said  Tom. 

"Uncle  John  could  get  it  out  to  them  when  he  comes,"  said  Russell,  with 
the  general  faith  in  Uncle  John.  "What  would  you  make  for  them?" 

"Isa  cquld  bake  a  cake  early  to-morrow  morning" 

"With  plums  in  it!" 

"•And  frosting'" 

"And  Aunt  Marion  would  pick  a  bunch  of  her  flowers,  roses  and  violets, 
if  you  ask  her,  Tom,"  said  Nell. 

"And  a  calla-lily." 

"And  papa  could  give  them  a  silver  dollar." 

"But  that  wouldn't  be  us,"  said  Clara,  on  whom  it  dawned  that  they 
were  very  generous  with  other  folks'  things.  "They  can  have  my  ^Girls'  Own 
Book, ' ' 

"And  my  'Robinson  Crusoe. ' 

"And  my  'Pilgrim's  Progress,'  "  said  Tom. 

"I  would  give  them  my  top,  if  I  had  another,"  said  Russell. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


"You  always  were  a  stingy!"  exclaimed  Clara. 

"I'm  not  stingy!  I  don't  want  to  give  it  to  them  if  I  want  it  myself; 
do  I?" 

"Well,  perhaps  they  have  a  top.     There's  your  parchesi-board. " 

"We  like  to  play  with  that  sometimes,  you  know. " 

"Or  the  kaleidoscope." 

"Why,  of  course  I'm  not  done  with  my  kaleidoscope!" 

"I  guess  Russell  won't  give  anything,"  said  Nell. 

"Yes,  I  will,  too!     I'll  give  the  transparent  slate." 

"'Tisn't  yours  to  give, "  said  Nell.  "It's  mine.  But  I'd  just  a»  Jef. 
And  Emeline  may  have  my  doll  Queenie ;  that  is,  if  Queenie  would  like  to 

go-" 

"And  her  cradle?" 

"Ye-e-s." 

"Well,  I  guess  I  shall  have  to  give  Jack  my  box  of  tools,"  said  Tom, 
with  a  fine  air,  "and  trust  to  luck  or  Uncle  John  for  another." 

"And  they  might  have  the  little  camera  that  doesn't  belong  to  anybody, 
and  the  second-best  box  of  colors,  with  the  old  geography  to  paint  over." 

"Do  you  suppose  they'd  like  a  kitten?"  asked    Will. 

"Pshaw!     They  have  half  a  hundred,  very  likely,  now." 

"Half  a  hundred  kittens!     Oh!  how  I  wish  I  lived  in  a  light-house!" 

"Well,  you  do;  the  next  best  or  the  next  worse  thing.  Though  I  never 
dreamed  we  should  have  neighbors.  They  really  are  neighbors,  you  know, 
if  we  don't  see  much  of  them  or  anything  of  them,"  said  Clara.  "There,  if 
Aunt  Marion  will  make  a  lot  of  her  cider-candy  to-morrow,  to  put  in,  I  think 
that  will  do  for  Jack  and  Emeline.  Don't  you?  The  question  is,  how  ever 
shall  we  get  it  out  to  them?" 

"Wait  for  Uncle  John.     He  will,"  said  Nell. 

"I'm  glad  they  don't  want  the  kitty,"  murmured  Will,  hugging  his  pet, 


296  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

as  they  went  off  to  bed.  "  It's  only  one  more  day  now.  If  there  isn't  a  red 
collar  on  the  tree  tor  my  kitty  I  shall  be  awful  cross!" 

"I  really  think,"  said  Clara  to  her  Aunt  Marion,  when  they  said  good- 
night, and  a  broad  ray  of  the  light-house  lamp  came  skimming  into  the  room, 
"that  it  isn't  so  bad  as  I  thought  it  was  going  to  be  here,  seeing  we  have 
some  neighbors." 

Every  few  moments  those  great  rays  went  sweeping  by  and  bridging  the 
darkness  between  the  lonely  hotel  and  the  white  pillar  of  the  light-house  in 
the  night.  Perhaps  it  was  on  that  bridge  that  Jack's  and  Emeline's  fancies 
traveled  across  the  water  and  the  long  tongue  of  ice-wrapped  land,  to  these 
children,  with  their  pretty  heads  huddled  together  in  the  window-panes  of 
the  vast  empty  hotel. 

"There's  children  over  there,"  said  Emeline.  "I  saw  them  through 
father's  glass.  They  were  playing  on  the  long  piazza." 

"I  wish  we  had  a  piazza/"'  said  Jack. 

"Our  causeway's  just  as  good,  in  calm  weather." 

"No,  it  isn't.  The  ball  bounces  off  into  the  water,  and  then  I  have  to> 
swim  for  it,  and  sometimes  it's  too  cold,  and  sometimes  there's  a  sea  on  and  I 
can't  go  for  it." 

"I  always  make  another,  you  know,"  said  the  motherly  little  body  beside 
him. 

"And  we  can't  play  marbles  there,  because  they  all  roll  off. " 

"We  can  play  catch." 

"Well,  sometimes  it's  too  wet  with  the  breaking  sea.  Shouldn't  you  like 
to  live,  Erri,  where  there  isn't  any  sea?" 

"The  Bible  says  there  isn't  any  sea  in  heaven.  But  I  don't  believe  we 
should  like  it  there.  I  guess  we  should  miss  the  sea.  Not  to  hear  it,  not  to 
see  it — it  would  be  like  not  having  any  mother  over  again.  It  always  sings 
us  to  sleep." 

"Mothers  don't  make  such  a  noise  as  this  old  surf  does  some  nights,  when 
you  can't  hear  yourself  breathe.  Say,  Em,  do  you  remember  mother?' 

"A  little.  Not  much/'  answered  Emeline,  "Only  just  that  her  eyes- 
were  the  color  the  sea  is  far  out  under  the  sky  in  soft  weather.  Dove's  eyes, 
that  it  tells  of  in  the  Bible. " 

"Hard  on  father  to  do  without  her;  aint  it?  But  he  says  you're  just 
mother  over  again,  any  way.  Only  not  your  eyes.  For  yours  are  the  color 
of  the  pools  where  the  sun  shines  through  the  brown  sea-weed.  Do  you  sup- 
pose mother  knew  when  Christmas  came?  Father  doesn't." 

"No  matter.  We  do.  Father  has  so  much  to  think  of.  It's  so  awfully 
important  to  keep  the  light  all  night.  It  would  be  so  terrible  if  the  light  went 


STEPPING   STONES. TO    HAPPINESS. 


297 


out  and  the  ships  and 
people  went  down ;  and 
only  think,  so  many 
fathers  on  them,  too; 
with  children  waiting 
for  them  at  home.  Oh ! 
it's  awfully  important, 
you  see;  and  he  can't 
think  of  everything." 

''Well,  if  I  had  a  lit- 
tle boy,  I'd  think  of 
Christmas,  I  know.  I'd 
give  him  a  plane  and  a 
saw  and  chisel,  any 
way. ' ' 

"Perhaps  he  will. 
He'll  think  of  it  when  I 
give  him  the  comforter 
I've  made." 

"I  know  what  he'll  say. 
the  best  little  comforter." 

"Oh!"  said  Emeline,  with  her  cheeks  glowing:  "We  have  to  be  very 
good  to  father,  he's  had  so  much  trouble.  It  was  dreadful  for  him  to  lose 
mother,  and  have  us  babies  to  bring  up.  And  he's  real  good  to  u-«  Some 
fathers  whip  their  boys." 

"Whip  their  boys!  I  guess  so.  How  you  talk!  Fat'ucr  never  whipped 
me.  He  shook  me  once.  I  thought  then  I'd  run  away.  Any  way,  I  don't 
mean  to  stay  here  when  I'm  a  man.  Days  when  the  sea  is  gray  and  black, 
and  the  rain  is  driving  by,  and  the  waves  go  off  like  great  guns,  I  think  I'll 
get  away  any  time." 

"And  leave  father  and  me?"  said  Emeline,  pitifully,  "when  you're  all 
we  have?" 

"I'd  send  for  you.  I  couldn't  do  without  you,  you  know.  Oh!  There's 
their  light!  The  children's  over  on  the  reef.  Now  let's  get  father's  glass 
again  and  look  at  them."  And  Jack  fitted  the  long  spy-glass  to  his  eye  with 
expedition.  "There's  ever  so  many  of  them.  I  should  think  there  was  a 
dozen.  And  one  of  them  has  a  kitten.  Oh!  say,  Em,  I  wish  we  had  a  kit- 
ten! And  one  has  pushed  the  kitten  boy  away.  I  guess  they're  talking,  by 
the  way  their  heads  go.  What  if  they  are  talking  about  us?'' 

"Oh!  they   wouldn't  be.     I   don't   suppose   they   know  of  us.     Maybe 


He'll  say  just  what  he  did  last  year;  that  you're 


29S  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

they're  watching  the  witches  make  tea.  I  used  to  like  to  watch  the  witches 
making  tea,  before  I  knew  it  was  only  the  picture  of  our  lamp  in  the  window 
pane,  dancing  out  there.  See  the  long  rays  of  the  tower-lamps  wheeling 
about  there  now;  one  of  them  made  a  bridge  clear  way  over  to  the  children. 
They  always  make  me  think  of  that  Bible  verse  about  God's  laying  the  beams 
of  His  chambers  upon  the  waters." 

"Things  always  put  you  in  mind  of  the  Bible.  Does  it  say  anything 
about  Christmas  there?"  And  while  he  still  used  the  glass,  Emeline  went  to 
the  table  and  read  him  the  story  St.  Luke  tells  about  the  shepherds  keeping 
their  flocks. 

"I  think  of  it  often,"  said  Emeline,  "summer  nights  when  we  are  all 
sitting  up  outside  the  tower,  and  the  Milky  Way  seems  a  road  right  into 
heaven,  and  the  stars  are  spirits — great  shining  spirits — sweeping  along.  It 
will  be  splendid,  oh!  it  will  be  splendid,  after  we  are  dead  if  we  are  just  such 
great  spirits,  sweeping  and  shining  with  stars  on  our  foreheads." 
"I'd  rather  be  alive,"  said  Jack. 

"Yes,"  said  Emeline,  half  regretfully.  "Of  course;  so  should  I;  with 
you  and  father." 

"But  I  suppose,"  said  Jack,  "we  might  just  as  well  be  three  spirits  all 
alone  out  there  in  the  night  as  three  people  all  alone  here  in  the  light-house. 
Only  it's  warm  here  and  light.  Say,  Em,  what  do  you  suppose  those  children 
.are  going  to  have  Christmas?" 

"Oh!  everything.     They  may  have  a  Christmas  tree.     And  if  it's  clear 
-weather  we  may  see  it  through  the  glass  to-morrow  night." 
"To-morrow?     Day  after  to-morrow's  Christmas." 

"But  to-morrow's  Christmas  Eve.  Folks  always  have  their  trees,  I  guess, 
Christmas  Eve.  We  always  hear  the  bells  ringing  from  the  towns,  if  we  lis- 
ten, you  know." 

"Oh!"  said  Jack.  "I  suppose  we  could  make  some  molasses  candy  with 
nuts  in  it,  any  way,"  he  added,  presently. 

"And  father  will  tell  us  the  story  of  when  he  was  a  little  boy"- 
" It  doesn't  seem  as  if  father  ever  was  a  little  boy;    does  it?      There, 
they've  gone  to  bed,  now,"  as  he  shut  up  the  spy-glass.     "I  say,  Em,  it's  first 
rate  to  have  neighbors,   ain't  it?     They're  just  as  good  as  deaf  and  dumb 
neighbors  anyhow.     We  can  see  'em  if  we  can't  talk  to  'em." 

"Yes;  we  never  did  have  neighbors  in  the  winter  before.  I  wish  we 
could  send  them  some  of  our  nut-candy,"  said  Emeline.  "Yes,  it's  real  nice 
to  have  neighbors. " 

And  before  long,  while  the  light-keeper  toiled  up  and  down  his  winding 
stairs  to  attend  to  the  clock-work  of  the  lamps,  the  children  were  asleep,  while 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  299 

the  broad  beams  went  on  their  way  through  the  darkness,  leading  the  great 
ships  by  with  the  green  and  crimson  rays  glancing  on  their  stiff  and  frozen 
sails. 

There  was  enough  frost  in  the  gray  air  next  day  for  Christmas  weather, 
certainly;  but  the  blue  sky  and  sunshine,  that  go  with  the  last  Christmas 
errands,  were  not  to  be  seen.  Indeed,  the  atmosphere  was  full  of  frozen 
spiculae  of  snow  too  chill  to  fall.  Nor  was  there  any  of  the  clear,  night 
sparkle,  where  the  stars  seem  to  join  crisp  tones  with  the  glad  ringing  of  the 
bells. 

In  the  mediaeval  hall,  as  Aunt  Marion  called  it,  the  children  were  pranc- 
ing about  the  screens  that  hid  the  unlighted  tree,  and  wondering  why  Uncle 
John  didn't  come,  and  if  he  wasn't  coming  at  all,  and  if  they  would  have  the 
tapers  lit  before  he  came,  and  adding  something  every  little  while  to  the  par- 
cel that  was  to  be  gotten  over  to  the  light-house  by  hook  or  by  crook,  when 
Uncle  John  came,  if  he  ever  did  come. 

And  in  the  light-house  home,  Emeline  had  the  spider  on  the  stove,  and 
the  molasses  bubbling,  while  Jack  was  picking  the  meats  out  of  the  nuts,  and 
their  father  was  up  busy  with  the  lamps;  for  the  night  was  going  to  be  so 
cold  he  feared  it  might  congeal  the  oil;  and  the  dim  day  was  growing  dim- 
mer. The  nuts  were  in  at  last,  and  with  one  more  boiling  up  Emeline's 
platter  was  buttered,  and  the  compound  that  had  already  made  Jack's  mouth 
water  was  set  out  to  cool  in  the  twilight. 

"Oh!  if  it  isn't  cold!"  she  said,  with  a  shiver,  shutting  the  door.  "And 
I  declare  I  believe  I've  upset  the  trough  that  father  has  those  frozen  sea 
creatures  in  to  find  out  if  they'll  come  to  life  when  they  thaw  out  in  the 
spring.  I  must  see.  And  it's  dark,  so  dark!  How  I  pity  children  without 
homes  on  such  a  night  as  this!  How  quick  it  grew  dark.  I  didn't  notice  it." 

"Nor  I,"  said  Jack,  still  picking  at  a  nut-shell. 

k'I  can't  bear  the  dark,"  said  Emeline,  bustling  about  for  a  candle. 

"Nor  I,"  said  Jack  again.  "It — it  always  seems  like  a  great — a  great- 
thing— out  there,  you  know." 

"  I  suppose  it's  because  we've  always  had  the  light,  the  beautiful  great 
beams  of  the  tower  light.  And — Why,  Jack!  where  is  the  light?  Oh!  where 
is  the  light?  We  never  were  this  way  before!  Can't  father  light  it?  O, 
father!"  and  she  opened  the  door,  to  dart  up  the  tower  stairs,  and  tripped 
over  something  lying  at  their  foot. 

It  was  her  father  lying  there.  He  had  fallen — from  what  height  who 
could  tell,  or  whether  stumbling,  or  whether  with  a  stroke!  He  lay  cold  and 
unconscious.  He  might  be  dead.  She  did  not  utter  another  syllable;  but 
she  used  all  her  strength  and  dragged  him  over  the  threshold,  and  stopped 


300  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

and  pulled  a  little  way  again,  till  Jack  sprang  to  her  aid,  and  between  them 
they  got  him  across  the  room  to  his  bed.  It  had  taken  almost  a  half  hour  to- 
do  it.  Emeline  threw  herself  beside  him,  her  mouth  on  his,  her  tears  raining 
over  his  cold  face.  "He's  breathing!  He's  breathing!"  she  cried  out.  And 
suddenly  she  was  on  the  floor  again.  "The  lamps!  The  lamps!"  she  ex- 
claimed. "O,  Jack,  you  know  how.  You  must  go  up  and  light  them!' 

"I  can't!     Oh!  I  can't,  Em,"  he  said,  between  his  sobs.     "I  can't  go  up 
there  in  the  dark!" 

"You  must!"  she  answered.  "I  can't  leave  father  yet.  Oh!  do  go, 
Jack!"  she  cried,  in  an  agony.  "Just  think  of  the  ships,  of  the  wrecks,  of 
the  other  children's  fathers  drowned  and  dead,  if  the  light  isn't  burning;  if 
you  don't  go!" 

"I — I  can't,"  he  said. 

"But  if  you  don't,  I  shall  have  to.  I  shall  have  to  leave  father;  and 
perhaps  he'll  die  if  I  do.  '  He  may  never  come  to  if  I  don't  get  the  mustard 
on!  Do,  Jack  dear!  Do  go,  Jack!"  She  was  already  hurrying  about  for 
clothes  and  hot  water. 

"I — I  can't!"  said  Jack  again.  "But — well,  I'll  try."  And  he  lighted 
the  lanterns  slowly,  and  left  the  door  open,  and  began  to  climb  the  stairs, 
stopping  at  every  step.  And  Emeline  was  binding  the  mustard  plasters  on 
her  father's  feet  and  neck,  and  filling  jugs  with  hot  water  to  put  on  either 
side  of  him,  and  holding  his  rough  hand  and  kissing  it,  crying  and  trembling 
and  frightened ;  for  now  he  was  breathing,  indeed ;  breathing  in  such  a  fear- 
ful way  that  she  thought  every  breath  must  be  the  last. 

But  why  didn't  the  beams  sweep  out  ?  Why  was  it  still  so  dark  out  there  ? 
Couldn't  Jack  light  the  lamps?  Hadn't  he  gone?  She  ran  to  the  doorway. 
There  he  sat  crouched  half  way  up.  "Oh!  haven't  you  gone,  Jack?"  she 
cried  in  despair. 

"I — I  told  you  I  couldn't!"  he  replied.  "I  feel  as  if  all  those  dreadful 
things  that  will  happen  if  the  lamps  ain't  lighted  are  up  there  now." 

She  glanced  back  at  her  father.  She  could  do  no  good  if  she  stayed  be- 
side him.  Up  she  dashed,  caught  the  lantern  from  Jack,  who  meekly  fol- 
lowed her  as  she  almost  flew  on  her  upward  way.  One  glance  when  well 
within  the  tower-chamber,  and  she  saw  that  the  clock-work  which  turned  the 
wheel  about  was  broken ;  and  it  was  in  his  anxiety  and  haste  for  some  neces- 
sary tool  with  which  to  mend  it  that  her  father  had  fallen.  "Oh!  what  made 
us  let  Dan  off  for  his  Christmas?"  she  groaned.  "There  is  nothing  but  to 
turn  the  wheel  with  our  hands. "  And  she  lighted  lamp  after  lamp  and  began 
to  drag  the  wheel  about.  "And  one  of  us  must  do  it  all  night  long;  and  one 
of  us  must  go  for  the  doctor.  Which  shall  it  be?" 


STEPPING    STONES    TO    HAPPINESS.  307 

St 

And  Jack,  in  the  bottom  of  his  cowardly  little  soul,  felt  that  it  would  not 
be  he.  It  was  impossible;  he  could  not  do  either.  Stay  there  alone  in  that 
place,  dragging  the  wheel  around,  with  his  father  dying,  perhaps  dead— stiff 
and  cold  and  dead — and  the  horrible  vacancy  where  he  had  been  ?  Oh !  he 
never,  never  could.  He  would  rather  die  at  once,  himself,  here,  with  Eme- 
line beside  him.  And  he  didn't  want  to  die;  he  wasn't  like  Emeline;  death 
was  something  unspeakably  dreadful  to  him.  But  then,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  go  down  into  that  black  water  underneath  the  causeway  in  the  pitchy  dark, 
and  try  to  climb  those  icy  shores  opposite,  and  make  his  way  in  the  night 
across  those  heaps  of  ice  with  the  deep  channels  between  them,  and  not  a  star, 
only  the  black,  monstrous  dark  all  about ;  and  he  would  be  lost  and  drowned 
and  frozen.  Oh !  he  never,  never  could. 

"But  father  will  die  if  we  can't  get  a  doctor;  and  he  would  rather  die 
than  have  the  lamps  go  out,"  urged  Fmeline.  "One  of  us  must  go.  It's 
nothing  to  stay  here  and  turn  the  wheel,  that's  a  good  boy,  dear,  and  I  will 
go  for  the  doctor.  I  can  do  that  as  well  as  you,  you  know. ' '  And  so  she 
could;  for  she  could  handle  a  boa.  as  easily  ?.s  other  girls  could  trundle  a 
hoop. 

As  Jack  gazed  at  Emeline  aghast,  her  face  seemed  to  be  shining  and  smil- 
ing on  him  like  an  angel's.  She  already  looked  like  one  of  those  white  shin- 
ing spirits  she  had  spoken  of  the  night  before.  He  felt  as  if  it  were  a  sort  of 
sign — if  she  went  she  would  become  one  of  those  great  shining  spirits,  not  his 
little  loving,  living  Emeline.  His  little  Emeline  out  there  in  all  those  icy 
horrors  and  the  blackness!  The  tears  spurted  out  at  the  thought.  He  said 
something  seemed  to  snap  in  his  head  or  his  heart,  he  could  not  tell  which, 
and  let  him  out,  let  him  free  from  all  his  fear  and  shrinking.  "Good-bye, 
Emeline,"  he  called  out,  choking.  "I'll  go.  And  if  I  don't  come 
back" 


3o2  STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 

"If  you  don't,"  she  cried,  stopping  to  throw  her  arms  about  him,  "father 
will  be  dead,  and  I  will,  too,  and  it  will  be  all  the  same ;  for  we  shall  be 
together  somewhere  else!"  And  Jack  took  the  lantern  and  came  running 
back  with  her  cloak  and  hood ;  and  then  his  step  rang  on  the  stairs  again,  she 
heard  the  tower  door  slam,  and  nothing  more,  while  she  kept  on  her  weary 
way  dragging  the  lamps  around,  and  out  there  the  sea  made  its  cry. 

Poor  little  Jack !  As  he  plunged  into  the  night  Emeline's  white  look 
seemed  stamped  on  the  darkness,  together  with  the  fixed  and  suffering  face, 
livid  and  purple,  on  his  father's  pillow.  How  could  any  fear,  he  thought 
now,  keep  him  from  bringing  help?  He  did  not  stay  to  untie  the  painter  of 
his  boat,  cased  in  ice,  as  it  was ;  he  cut  it  with  his  jack-knife  when  he  had 
dropped  into  the  boat,  and  dipping  his  oars  into  the  blackness,  ferried 
across,  guided  by  the  flashing  of  the  lamps  that  Emeline  dragged  round, 
in  which  everything  started  out  one  moment,  and  then  was  lost  in  blacker 
shadow. 

I  can't  imagine  how  he  climbed  those  rocks  of  the  headland,  mere  sheets 
of  ice ;  but  he  did.  Boys  can  do  almost  anything.  And  he  caught  the  rope 
in  a  cleft  of  the  ice,  knowing  it  would  freeze  there  and  keep  the  boat  waiting 
for  the  doctor.  He  never  doubted  the  doctor's  coming  through  all  the  dan- 
ger; for  it  is  a  way  that  doctors  have.  Behind  him  now  the  lamps  kept  up 
their  flashing.  Far,  far  off  on  his  left  glimmered  the  windows  of  the  hotel 
where  the  children  were ;  far,  far  ahead  the  town  lights  flickered.  On  he  ran ; 
swiftly  wherever  snow  lay  frozen  and  smooth ;  climbing  and  slipping,  down 
and  up  again,  where  the  ice-blocks  had  been  piled.  Now  there  was  a  streak 
of  water  only  two  yards  wide,  he  saw  by  his  lantern ;  he  jumped,  and  the  ice- 
cake  tilted  and  rocked ;  and  he  jumped  again  and  clung  to  solid  rock.  Up 
and  down,  sliding,  falling,  rolling,  but  always  moving  on,  on  through  this 
hideous  gloom,  with  only  the  eyes  of  the  glancing  lights  in  it.  What  a  hor- 
rible noise  there  was  everywhere  in  the  grinding,  griding,  crashing,  of  the 
ice.  It  seemed  as  if  the  whole  cruel  North  moved  down  in  a  body  on  him. 
He  thought  of  pjeople  caught  on  ice  floes,  of  packs  of  wolves  racing  and 
scratching  along  them,  of  some  polar  bear  protecting  her  cubs  there;  and  he 
ran  all  the  faster.  But  what  was  there  in  all  out-doors,  then  he  thought, 
i  which  would  be  allowed  to  hurt  a  boy  encountering  such  dangers  for  his 
father's  sake  and  Emeline's?  And  he  waited  for  his  breath,  his  heart  palpitat- 
ing'furiously,  his  Itmgs  like  red-hot  brass.  As  he  s?ood  there,  a  little  fellow 
in  his  pea-jacket,  with  the  dull  lantern  in  his  hand,  it  was  like  some  hero  de-- 
fying  the  powers  of  cold  and  darkness  with  the  might  of  his  holy  errand. 

He  went  on  slowly  $  for  the  way  grew  more  difficult  on  this  narrow  neck 
of  the  long  peninsula,  where  the  tide  pushed  the  ice  about  and  jammed  it  iu 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  303 

mock  icebergs  glinting  to  the  light-house  beams  which,  fainter'  though  they 
were  with  distance  now,  strengthened  him,  every  time  they  came,  with  thought 
of  Emeline  at  the  wheel.  He  was  scratched  and  bruised  and  bleeding;  his 
clothes  were  torn,  and  his  cap  was  gone-,  but  he  was  conscious  of  nothing  ex- 
cept that  he  must  get  on.  He  climbed  laboriously  a  huge,  sloping  block  of 
ice  tipped  over  the  way,  slipping  back  half  its  height;  and  all  at  once  he  felfc 
it  move  with  him,  pushed  by  another  block,  keep  moving.  And  with  a  thrill 
of  terror  he  realized  that  the  tide  was  coming  in,  would  shove  and  jam  and 
heap  and  sweep  across  the  neck  of  land,  and  if  it  did  not  crush  him  between 
the  great  pieces  of  ice,  it  would  take  him  out  to  sea  on  the  other  side,  do  what 
he  would! 

Just  ahead,  Jack  knew,  must  lie  the  old  road  that  took  people  to  the  hotel 
in  summer,  raised  a  little  from  the  level,  and  so  offering  a  barrier  that  it 
might  take  the  rising  ice  some  little  time  to  surmount.  If  he  could  only  gain 
it!  He  dashed  forward  with  redoubled  speed,  bumping,  splashing,  tumbling, 
on  his  knees,  on  his  back,  on  his  hands  and  feet,  cutting  himself  on  sharp 
corners,  clutching  his  lantern  all  the  time,  and  all  the  time  making  progress, 
when  suddenly  the  darkness  came  down  like  a  heavier  pall,  unrent  by  any  rift 
of  light,  impenetrable.  The  long  beams  of  the  light-house  lamps  had  ceased 
to  flash.  There  were  no  more  of  them.  He  gazed  behind  him,  and  about 
him;  he  could  see  nothing.  The  lamps  had  gone  out- 

The  piled-up  ice-drift  hid  the  windows  where  the  happy  children  looked 
for  their  Uncle  John,  where  the  beautiful  dark  eyes  so  often  looked  over  their 
shoulders  ;  hid  the  sparkle  of  the  town  as  well.  He  did  not  know  which  way 
to  turn;  there  was  nothing  but  unbroken  blackness,  blackness  and  cold  about 
him;  he  was  getting  numb  with  standing  still  and  wpndering;  the  ice  was 
crunching  like  great  jaws  at  work;  the  snow  was  beginning  to  fall  over  it  all. 
He  was  lost. 

Back  in  the  mediaeval  hall,  the  children  peered  through  the  Window. 

"I  don't  believe  Uncle  John  means  to   come  at  all!"  cried  Clara. 

"Perhaps  he  had  some  sick  patient  that  he  couldn't  leave,"  urged  her 
mother,  coming  to  her  side,  a  little  anxious  lest  Aunt  Marion  were  anxious. 
"Besides  it  isn't  time  for  him,  quite." 

"You  don't  suppose  Uncle  John  can  be  lost?"  whispered  Will,  as  he  felt 
Aunt  Marion's  hand  tremble. 

"No,  indeed,"  said  his  father.  "My  dear/'  turning  to  his  wife,  "hadn't 
you  better  light  the  tree?  It  is  already  late." 

"Oh!  stop!  stop!  stop!"  cried  Tom  and  Clara  then  in  one  breath. 
'iSomething — something  has  happened  to  the  lighthouse!  Oh!  the  world  is 
coming  to  an  end!  The  light  has  gone  out!  " 


3o4  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

"And  how  will  Uncle  John  ever  see  to  get  here?"  cried  Will,  as  Aunt 
Marion  suddenly  clasped  him  in  her  arms. 

"And  what  do  you  suppose  has  become  of  Jack  and  Emeline?"  exclaimed 
Nell,  bursting  into  tears. 

"Light  the  tapers,  and  divert  the  children  quickly  as  you  can,"  said  the 
father  hurriedly  to  anybody  in  the  universe.  "I  will  get  the  men  and  see 
what  can  be  done  about  crossing  over  there!" 

"Oh!  you  never  will  try  that!"  exclaimed  his  wife.  "You  know  it  is 
impossible!" 

"  If  it  is,  I  shan't  do  it,"  he  said,  smiling. 

"But  what  could  you  and  two  men  do?  Wait  at  any  rate,  for  John  and 
his  man.  You  will  be  lost  and  drowned1  I  know  you  will !" 

"  Nonsense,  my  love!  I  will  run  no  unnecessary  risk.  But  that  light  out 
to-night,  snow  thickening,  and  storm  coming,  means  shipwreck  that  I  can't 
have  on  my  conscience.  Hands  off,  dear!  It  must  be  done.  But  first  of  all 
have  half  a  dozen  of  the  lanterns  lighted  and  tied  to  a  pole  and  thrust  out  of 
the  cupola  window  for  John's  direction.  Hurry  now!"  And  then  one  was 
getting  his  long  boots,  and  another  his  coats,  and  another  the  lights;  and  in 
the  midst  of  it  all,  the  screens  slid  away  and  the  tapers  blazed  out,  and  one  of 
the  doors  burst  open  with  much  stamping  and  outcry,  and  there  was  Uncle 
John  and  his  companion  and  the  burden  that  they  bore  among  their  other 
parcels  "A  little  lad  half  frozen,"  said  Uncle  John,  staying  to  greet  nobody, 
and  laying  his  burden  on  a  lounge.  ' '  Lucky  the  train  was  late.  I  heard  him, 
and  saw  his  lantern,  just  beside  the  old  road.  Bring  some  of  that  snow,  and 
be  quick  about  it!  Now  rub  for  your  life!"  And  then  Uncle  John  had 
turned  and  opened  his  arms  and  the  beautiful  brown  eyes  were  hid  upon  his 
breast. 

When  Jack  was  well  tucked  away  in  bed,  and  the  people  had  made  their 
way  to  the  light-house,  they  found  the  oil  in  the  lamps  congealed  and  Emeline 
fainted  beside  the  wheel.  But  Uncle  John  knew  how  to  right  all  that;  and 
what  to  do  for  the  father,  too.  And  while  the  rest  obeyed  directions  in  the 
tower,  he  attended  to  the  light-keeper's  concussion  of  the  brain,  and  spent  his 
Christmas  with  Emeline. 

"How  glad  I  am  we  stayed  here,"  said  Clara,  afterward.  "If  we  hadn't, 
you  know,  the  ships  would  have  been  wrecked  ;  the  light-house  keeper  would 
have  died,  and  Emeline  and  Jack  would  have  frozen  to  death.  It's  the  nicest 
Christmas  Eve  I  ever  knew!  Everybody  ought  to  spend  Christmas  Eve  out  in 
old  seaside  taverns,  I  think!"  And  one  would  suppose  Clara  had  done  so 
purposely. 

"I   thought  I  had  really  died   and   gone  to  heaven,  you  better  believe, " 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


3«>S 


said  Jack,  telling  Emeline  his  adventures  for  the  hundredth  time,  "when  I 
opened  my  eyes,  and  that  Christmas  tree  was  twinkling,  all  lights  and  colors, 
with  the  children,  and  those  women  like  angels!  And  I  don't  know  but  what 
I  did!  For  it's  like  heaven  to  think  father's  going  to  help  these  doctors 
about  their  experiments  and  things,  and  you  and  I  will  live  with  the  children, 
and  grow  up  with  Tom  and  Clara,  and  never  lay  eyes  again  on  old  Hurricane 
Light!" 


3o6  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


CHAPTER  TWELFTH. 


Other  Children. 

Wax  to  receive,  and  marble  to  retain. 

— Byron. 
I  remember,  I  remember 

How  my  childhood  fleeted  by — 
The  mirth  of  its  December, 
And  the  warmth  of  its  July. 

—  W.  M.  Praed. 

With  the  smile  that  was  childlike  and  bland. 

— Bret  Hart e. 

We  pardon  in  the  degree  that  we  love. 

— Rochefoucauld. 

Use  three  physicians — 
Still  first  Dr.  Quiet ; 
Next  Dr.  Meryman 
And  Dr.  Dyet. 

— Regimen  Sanitatis  Salernitanum. 

Nature  fits  all  the  children  with  something  to  do. 

— /.  R.  Lowell. 

How  cruelly  sweet  are  the  echoes  that  start 
When  memory  plays  an  old  tune  on  the  heart. 

— Eliza  Cook. 

There  was  a  place  in  childhood  that  I  remember  well, 

And  there  a  voice  of  sweetest  tone  bright  fairy  tales  did  tell. 

— Samuel  Lover. 

Tbemostocles  said;    The  Athenians  command  the  rest  of  Greece;  1  command  the  Athe- 
nians; your  mother  commands  me;  and  you  command  your  mother. — Plutarch. 

It  is  not  all  children  that  are  reared  in  the  love  lines  of  the  kindergar- 
ten methods,  or  in  any  other  method  that  makes  them  a  blessing  to  themselves 
or  to  the  community.  Often  circumstances  master  the  parents,  and  the 
children  shift  for  themselves  and  are  in  reality  reared  by  their  hereditary 
traits;  and  sometimes  when  the  young  mother  has  little  knowledge  or  skill 
and  no  assistance,  and  proceeds  with  the  old  fear  of  sparing  the  rod,  she  is 
halt  beside  herself  by  reason  of  the  development  of  those  traits  before  her 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  307 

eyes,  and  finds  that,  labor  as  she  may  to  bring  about  happiness  in  her  home, 
the  very  things  that  should  make  for  happiness,  the  children,  themselves,  are 
growing  up  to  precisely  an  opposite  result.  But  since  it  has  been  discovered 
that  homesickness  is  a  disease,  that  laziness  also  is  a  disease, — apt  to  be  in- 
curable— that  an  inclination  to  petty  thefts  of  things  not  wanted,  and  sometimes 
thrown  away  at  once,  is  a  mania,  often  inherited,  and  no  more  within  the 
power  of  the  patient  to  control  than  any  more  violent  mania  is — it  is  to  be 
imagined  that  many  other  emotional  matters  may  come  under  the  same  head, 
and  gradually  reach  a  similar  classification  as  ailments  to  be  medicined  rather 
than  wickednesses  to  be  punished. 


Medicine  Rather  Than  Punishment 

In  no  way  will  this  theory  be  of  more  useful  application  than  in  the  rear- 
ing of  children,  who,  from  having  been  regarded  since  time  began  as  full  of 
the  old  Adam,  which  is  to  be  chastised  and  whipped  out  of  them,  will  now  be 
seen  as  victims  of  the  diseases  of  their  tender  years,  and  be  untiringly  diag- 
nosed and  medicated  therefor. 

Not  that  the  maternal  rhubarb  bottle  will  take  the  place  of  the  maternal 
slipper,  but  that  divine  patience  will  be  more  frequently  invoked  to  fill  out 
the  measure  of  human  patience,  and  it  will  be  comprehended  that  naughti- 
nesses are  no  more  to  be  whipped  out  of  children  than  spots  out  of  a  leopard, 
or  evil  desires  out  of  grown  people;  and  that  if  you  can  not  "reason  with  a 
mule,"  you  can  with  a  child,  even  but  just  escaping  babyhood,  if  you  are  will- 
ing to  curb  your  own  temper,  to  forget  yourself,  and  not  to  fail  in  exhaustless 
gentleness ;  and  that  only  those  that  can  so  curb  temper  and  exercise  self-f or- 
getfulness  have  any  business  to  be  about  children  at  all. 

How  many  people  do  we  see  who  are  punishing  children  for  their  own 
faults,  inherited  and  repeated  without  choice  in  the  matter,  administering  the 
punishment  all  in  good  faith,  and  because  they  know  the  trouble  those  faults 
have  given  themselves,  and  are  likely  to  give  the  little  victims  as  they  in- 
crease in  years  and  find  themselves  in  the  toils,  and  because  they  think  it  best 
in  pure  love  to  drive  out  the  evil  spirit,  as  if  the  very  process  of  such  sweep- 
ing and  garnishing,  in  exciting  enmity  and  rage,  and  heating  blood  and  brain, 
did  not  invite  the  other  seven  worse  than  the  first  to  enter  and  take  possession ! 


Heredity. 

All  parents  are  happy  in  viewing  themselves  when  repeated  in  their 
children,  as  if  it  were  a  sure  pledge  of  immortality  that  this  line  of  face,  that 
breadth  of  temple,  this  curve  of  eyebrow  or  of  lip,  were  to  be  handed  down 


(•508) 


THE  LOVE  LINES  OF  THE  KINDERGARTEN  METHODS. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS  309 

the  generations ;  and  pleasant  as  they  find  all  that,  just  so  bitter  do  they  find 
it  when  unfortunate  traits,  that  previously  might  have  been  repressed  in 
themselves,  tut  that  have  not  been,  and  that  only  afford  misery,  are  brought 
into  action  through  inheritance,  and  they  see  their  own  sins  finding  them  out 
again.  Yet  although  they  may  have  reason  to  doubt  if  any  rod  ever  hindered 
their  lying,  or  did  anything  but  drive  them  to  concealment;  if  any  depriva- 
tion of  desired  things  ever  made  unselfishness  in  them,  or  did  anything  but 
aggravate  avarice;  if  any  ridicule  ever  made  the  difficult  problem  easy  of 
comprehension,  or  if  any  of  the  compulsory  and  primitive  methods  wrought 
any  but  momentary  and  superficial  gaining  of  an  object,  and  lasting  harm 
and  hurt — still  they  go  on  with  these  methods,  the  rod,  the  dark  closet,  the 
make-game,  the  robbery  (to  call  it  its  true  name),  and  hinder  the  mental  and 
moral  growth  of  the  generation  by  just  so  much  unwise  action  in  treating 
children  like  criminals. 

That  children  have  always  been  regarded  as  delicious  and  delightful 
tilings,  when  giving  nobody  any  anxiety  as  to  their  real  welfare,  is  quite  un- 
disputed ;  but  when  this  anxiety  arises,  whether  they  are  criminals  or  have 
been  but  too  often  the  victims  of  criminals  is  a  question  that  might  be  con- 
sidered to  their  advantage.  Meanwhile  even  our  treatment  of  criminals 
grows  to  partake  less  and  less  of  the  punitive  character,  and  more  and  more  of 
the  hindering  and  curative. 


Sparing  the  Rod. 

If  we  look  with  condemnation  on  the  whipping-post  for  grown  people  in 
the  full  possession  of  all  the  faculties  they  ever  had,  how  can  we  approve  of 
the  slipper  used  on  children  with  faculties  but  half  developed  ?  The  general 
sense  of  all  civilization  now  seems  to  be  that  we  shall  not  revenge  ourselves 
for  crime,  but  shall  simply  prevent  its  further  commission ;  how,  then,  can 
we  treat  tender  little  beings,  without  the  power  to  help  themselves, 
with  any  less  consideration  ?  Assuredly  the  time  is  not  distant  when 
duty  in  this  regard  will  be  seen  at  a  different  point  of  view  from 
that  of  the  past.  The  half-opened  blossom  will  not  be  made  to  suffer 
unnecessary  pain  for  the  worm  at  its  heart,  nor  shut  up  away  from  the 
sunshine  that  the  worm  may  be  left  to  eat  in  peace,  but  gentle  forces  will 
find  the  blight  and  remove  it,  and  let  the  bud  bloom  to  what  perfection  it  may 
in  all  the  sunshine  it  can  have.  That  it  may  take  almost  infinite  patience  to 
bring  up  children  as  children,  and  not  as  criminals,  is  not  to  weigh  in  the 
least  against  the  necessity.  Infinite  patience  is  the  first  fruit  of  all  true  love, 
and  no  mother,  no  aunt,  no  guardian  of  children,  has  a  right  to  be  without  a 


310 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


NOT  TO  FAIL  IN  EXHAUSTLESS  GENTLENESS. 


goodly  supply  of  it,  and  while  attending  to  the  good  of  the  children  other- 
wise, to  be  busy  besides  in  the  active  cultivation  of  this  heavenly  plant  in 
themselves.  There  are  numberless  ways  of  repressing  evil  without  exciting 
it,  and  of  cutting  off  sin,  not  by  lopping  the  little  branches,  but  by  gently 
digging  round  the  root,  and  exterminating  as  much  as  can  be  reached  at  once 
in  the  yet  imperfect  system,  which  is  to  grow  more  perfect  as  each  generation 
regards  its  successors  as  something,  if  not  already  superior  to  itself,  at  any 
rate  to  be  made  so,  and  not  to  be  kept  inferior  by  the  lash  of  tongue  and 
rod. 

But  it  requires  love  to  repress  evil  gently  and  firmly,  to  rear  children 
with  the  tenderness  that  condemnation  of  rude  methods  requires,  and  every 
one  does  not  naturally  possess  this  love.  That  is  a  bold  person  who  con- 
fesses so  flagrant  a  fault  as  an  absence  from  the  composition  of  the  love  of 
children,  not  one's  own  merely,  but  all  people's  children. 


STEPPING  STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  311 

Loving  Children. 

For  that  love  has  become  universally  recognized  as  a  necessary  feature 
of  a  worthy  nature,  as  something  by  the  absence  of  which  one  is  indeed 
unnatural,  not  to  say  monstrous.  Owing  to  this  fact,  it  is  very  seldom  that 
one  admits,  even  when  feeling  it,  that  children  are  a  nuisance,  and  more 
generally  people  consider  it  wise  to  pretend  interest  and  affection  whether 
it  is  genuine  or  not.  Of  course,  as  everybody  knows,  the  politic  person, 
the  electioneering  man,  the  woman  with  an  object  to  gain,  always  begins 
by  kissing  the  children ;  and  the  behavior  of  many  young  ladies  in  regard 
to  the  matter  was  long  since  caricatured  by  Dickens  in  one  of  his  sketches, 
where  he  represents  them  crowding  round  the  nurse  who  brings  in  the 
baby  to  the  christening,  and  asking,  as  if  with  innocent  ignorance  and  a 
reminiscence  of  kittens  and  puppies,  if  the  dear  little  thing  can  open  its 
eyes  yet. 

But  there  are  many  people  who  honestly  think  they  do  love  children, 
and  would  be  mightily  indignant  if  told  that  they  deceived  themselves, 
that  children  annoyed  them,  and  were  on  the  whole  rather  disagreeable 
than  otherwise  to  them.  These  individuals  do  love  children  for  a  little 
while,  as  an  amusement  when  they  have  nothing  else  to  do,  and  to  caress 
when  the  child  is  sunny  and  pretty  and  sweet  and  clean.  But  let  the  child 
be  ugly,  and  it  does  not  attract  them;  let  it  be  neglected,  and  of  a  dirty 
face,  and  it  repels  them ;  let  it  scream,  and  they  can't  for  the  life  of  them 
see  why  people  bring  their  children  on  journeys,  or  to  church,  or  into  the 
drawing-room,  or  at  the  table — according  to  the  situation  of  the  particular 
annoyance  at  the  moment. 

But  they  who  surely  and  absolutely  love  children  do  not  stay  to  see 
whether  their  faces  and  frocks  are  clean  and  pretty  or  not — the  child  is  a 
lovely  thing  to  them  under  all  the  mask  of  the  dust  of  which  we  are  made, 
the  soil,  the  wear  and  tear;  they  do  not  much  care  whether  the  child 
screams  or  not;  often,  indeed,  to  them,  as  to  the  old  miner  in  the  Califor- 
nia theatre  who,  when  a  baby  set  up  its  pipes,  called  out  to  the  orchestra 
to  stop  their  strumming  and  let  him  hear  the  baby  yell,  the  sound  is  a  sort 
of  music;  and  like  the  man  who  considered  being  beaten  at  whist  the  next 
pleasure  to  beating,  they  had  rather  hear  a  baby  yell  than  not  have  one 
around  at  all. 

Those  who  love  children  are  not  those  who  merely  love  the  pleasure 
they  can  get  from  children;  those  love,  not  the  children,  but  that  pleasure, 
and  the  moment  it  ceases  to  be  pleasure,  then  farewell  to  the  children. 
Those  who  really  love  children,  love  all  about  them,  the  troubling  and  the 


LITTLE  MERCHANTS. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  31$ 

teasing  that  they  make,  the  washing  and  wiping  and  worrying;  they  do 
not  tire  with  their  fretting,  they  are  not  disgusted  with  their  care,  they  are 
not  annoyed  with  their  questioning,  they  are  not  made  nervous  by  their 
bawling;  they  take  them  in  their  entirety;  it  never  occurs  to  them  to  say 
that  these  things  are  disagreeable,  for,  in  reality,  the  agreeable  things,  the 
loveliness,  the  velvet  cheeks,  the  exquisite  mouth  with  its  little  pearls,  the 
perfect  eyes,  the  opening  soul,  the  charming  intelligence,  the  constant 
sense  of  the  creation  of  a  new  human  being  going  on  under  the  eyes,  the 
receptivity  of  love,  the  thing  for  love,  all  so  far  overbalance  anything  that 
is  not  in  accord  with  them  as  to  put  it  entirely  out  of  sight  and  mind.  To- 
those  who  love  children  it  does  not  occur  to  wait  before  giving  love-  in  or- 
der to  see  if  they  are  willful  and  spoiled,  whether  they  cry  too  much, 
whether  they  are  going  to  give  trouble  or  not;  they  only  say,  "Here  is  a 
child;  let  us  love  it."  They  are  ready  to  get  up  in  the  night  with  it,  to- 
walk  the  floor  with  it,  to  tread  on  tiptoe  if  it  sleeps,  to  abandon  themselves 
to  its  amusement  if  it  wakes,  to  sing  to  it,  to  talk  to  it,  to  obey  all  its  little 
tyrannies,  to  stay  at  home  from  other  pleasure  for  it  and  think  it  no  sacri- 
fice, to  forget  themselves  in  its  existence,  and  when  it  is  the  most  trouble 
to  be  thankful  that  there  is  a  baby  in  the  house. 


They  Who  Really  Love  Children. 

These  are  the  people  who  do  love  children,  not  merely  they,  it  may  be 
seen,  who  love  the  peachy  cheek  which  yields  to  their  kisses  with  pleasant 
sensation,  and  the  fragrance  of  the  sweet  baby  breath;  not  merely  they 
who  like  the  tickling  that  their  vacant  or  tired  minds  receive  from  the 
action  of  the  young  expanding  intellect  of  the  tiny  creature,  who  are  enter- 
tained by  the  stammering  of  the  first  thoughts  and  the  effort  after  the  first 
syllables,  who  are  pleased  in  fine  weather  and  run  away  in  foul.  These 
latter  are  the  summer  friends  of  the  little  people,  and  full  soon  do  the  little 
people  find  it  out;  for,  as  a  general  rule,  one  needs  no  better  criterion  as. 
to  who  it  is  that  loves  children  than  observation  of  the  fact  of  whom  it  is 
that  the  children  love.  It  is  true  that  children  will  be  amused  and  pleased 
for  a  while  by  the  summer  sort  of  friends;  but  let  a  tumble,  a  grief,  a  pain, 
come  to  them,  and  the  summer  friend  is  discarded  unerringly  for  the  one 
whose  sympathy  is  steadfast,  and  who  does  not  ask  whether  it  is  a  good 
child  or  a  bad  one,  a  pretty  or  a  plain  one,  a  rich  or  a  poor,  but  only 
whether  it  is  a  child.  "Frank,  I  love  good  little  boys/'  said  a  worthy 
parent,  trying  to  do  his  duty  to  an  obstreperous  young  son.  ''Yes,  papa," 


3i4  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

came  the  reply  of  the  four-year-old,  "but  Uncle  So-and-So  loves  little  boys 
whether  they  are  good  or  not. "  And  that,  it  seems  to  us,  is  the  only  way 
to  love  them ;  for  is  it  not  the  way  in  which  we  hope  we  ourselves  are 
loved,  not  only  by  one  another,  but  by  the  power  above  us?  It  is  also,  in- 
deed, the  only  way  in  which  to  obtain  lasting  pleasure  from  the  little  be- 
ings ;  for  it  is  only  when  we  have  surrendered  ourselves,  without  thought 
of  what  we  obtain  in  return,  but  because  we  can  not  help  it,  and  would  not 
help  it  if  we  could,  that  we  find  out  what  they  have  done  for  us,  the  light 
and  joy  that  they  have  brought  into  the  house,  with  all  the  labor  and  con- 
fusion and  care  that  they  have  brought  there,  too;  for  more  than  once  has 
it  chanced  that  into  a  tumultuous  and  hating  household  the  advent  of  a  little 
child  has  brought  peace  and  harmony,  and  love,  too,  not  only  for  itself,  but 
for  all  around  it,  till  it  has  made  lives  dear  and  desirable  that  before  it  came 
seemed  impossible  to  live ;  for  there  are  few  such  peacemakers  as  a  baby ; 
none  such,  if  we  may  believe  the  poet,  as  a  baby's  grave. 

Yet,  while  it  is  to  be  believed  that  all  people  love  their  own  children, 
even  if  their  love  for  the  children  of  others  is  questionable,  it  would  be  a 
wise  precaution  on  the  part  of  one  living  or  visiting  in  a  house  where  there 
are  children  to  learn  something  of  child-love  beforehand,  if  they  wish  to  have 
any  enjoyment  of  their  life  or  of  their  visit,  or  to  be  a  welcome  member  of 
the  family.  For  unless  there  is  our  ideal  mother  in  the  house,  and  some- 
times it  must  be  confessed  if  there  is,  the  children  will  be  apt  to  run  riot. 

It  is  not  every  one  who  knows  how  to  entertain  and  to  take  care  of 
children  properly  at  the  same  time.  The  little  people  are  to  their  authors 
and  owners  astonishing  and  delightful  circumstances,  revelations  of  wonder; 
it  is  a  marvel  that  they  exist  at  all ;  and  how  much  greater  marvel  that  they 
are  so  lovely,  so  bright,  so  precocious,  that  they  know  black  from  white,  that 
they  can  count  three;  how  sweet  the  little  syllables  drop  from  their  lips!  how 
charming  is  the  assertion  of  their  will!  how  charming  that  they  have  a  will 
at  all!  is  all  this  possible?  and  is  all  this  theirs?  And  the  child  is  not  only 
worshipped  as  a  part  of  themselves  and  a  possession,  but  as  a  subject  of  de- 
lightful awe  and  mystery  in  the  very  fact  of  its  being. 


Troublesome  Children. 

Of  course  this  is  quite  right  and  pleasant  with  our  own  children ;  but 
somehow  or  other  it  does  not  seem  so  right  and  pleasant  with  other 
people's  children ;  and  they  are  not  half  so  charming  in  the  assertion  of  their 
wills  when  they  dispute  the  seat  or  the  book  with  us,  while  politeness  to  their 
elders  makes  it  rather  difficult  for  us  to  assert  our  wills ;  and  they  are  subjects 


THE  YOUNG  EXPANDING  INTELLECT. 


3iC  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

of  no  delightful  awe  and  mystery  at  all  when  they  are  tumbling  all  over  us 
*vith  sticky  fingers  and  daubed  faces ;  when  they  burst  into  our  sleeping- 
rooms  in  the  morning;  when  they  insist  on  crowding  into  the  carriage  already 
full ;  when  they  set  up  a  bawl  in  the  middle  of  an  interesting  conversation, 
and  instead  of  being  scooped  up  and  swept  out  of  the  room  are  expostulated 
with ;  when  they  disturb  the  peace  of  breakfast,  dinner,  and  tea;  when  every- 
thing is  interrupted  by  the  demanding  of  these  cherubs,  and  everything  is 
so  in  abeyance  to  their  wishes  that  elderly  people  seem  to  have  no  rights  in 
the  world  at  all,  and  the  whole  pleasure  of  one's  visit  to  the  parents,  or  the 
parents'  visit  to  one's  self,  is  destroyed  by  their  presence  and  behavior,  till 
we  are  inclined  to  believe  that  the  correct  definition  of  the  word  cherub  is 
that  other  word  imp. 

Of  course  parents  owe  an  undisputed  duty  to  their  children,  and  it  is 
necessary  that  the  little  things  should  be  made  happy;  that  their  proper 
pleasures  should  be  unrestricted ;  that  their  questions  should  be  answered ; 
that  they  should  not  be  grieved  or  outraged ;  that  their  lives  should  be  one 
long  remembrance  of  happiness  as  far  as  their  parents  can  make  them  so. 
But  these  same  people  owe,  also,  an  undisputed  duty  to  their  guests,  when 
they  have  guests,  and  if  they  can  not  perform  it,  they  certainly  should  not 
put  themselves  in  the  way  of  failing  in  it  by  having  any  guests;  and  it  is 
just  as  right  that  the  guests  should  not  be  grieved  and  outraged  as  that  the 
children  should  not  be. 

Only  those  people  do  that  which  is  either  agreeable  or  decent  who  regard 
their  guests  as  wards,  for  the  time  being,  if  not  actively  to  be  made  happy, 
yet  to  be  allowed  to  be  happy  if  they  will,  and  who  take  into  consideration 
whether  or  not  these  persons,  who  are  thus  at  their  mercy,  can  be  happy 
with  other  people's  children  tyrannizing  over  them  in  the  manner  that  one 
may  so  frequently  see  them  do.  It  would  seem  as  though  plain  common 
sense  must  teach  people  that  their  children  are  not  as  lovesome  to  all  the 
world  as  to  themselves;  and  that  even  if  others  find  them  very  attractive, 
yet  they  may  weary  of  what  the  natural  ties  of  flesh  and  blood  make  it  im  • 
possible  that  they  themselves  should  ever  weary;  and  that  it  is  to  betaken 
for  granted  that  certain  things  are  disagreeable,  and  that  it  is  not  to  be  left 
to  the  guest  to  complain,  or  else  pretend  politely  that  it  is  all  as  it  should 
be,  when  trodden  and  trampled  on  by  a  parcel  of  little  people  without  fear  of 
man.  One,  indeed,  may  be  as  fond  of  children  as  the  next  person,  but,  it  is 
always  to  be  understood  that  that  means  children  in  the  right  place,  and  where 
the  guest  is  concerned  the  right  place  is  never  the  first  place.  And  if  we 
happen  to  be  the  guest  of  the  occasion  how  swiftly  our  thoughts  run,  and  how 
much  to  the  purpose. 


REPRIMANDED. 


3i8  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

The  Guest  with  Children. 

How  differently,  we  say,  we  would  bring  these  children  up  if  we  had 
them,  and  how  badly  they  are  being  brought  up  by  those  that  do  have  them ! 
In  what  cold  blood  do  we  look  at  them!  They  are  not  always  children  to 
us — the  lovely  blossoming  things.  They  are  little  men  and  women,  our 
neighbors  in  miniature,  having  the  trajts  of  their  ancestors,  of  which  traits 
we  are  apt  through  our  family  gossip  to  know  more  than  the  descendants  of 
those  ancestors  do  themselves,  repeating  this  uncle  or  that  aunt,  or  the  old 
grandfather  long  gone,  and  exciting  our  animadversion,  or,  not  so  often, 
possibly  our  admiration,  by  the  fact.  Moreover,  we  forget  in  looking  at 
them  that  we  were  ever  children  ourselves;  we  speak  and  think  of  them  as  of 
beings  of  a  separate  species,  not  quite  of  a  lower  order  perhaps,  and  not  quite 
cherubs  certainly.  But  we  expect  of  the  little  creatures  whom  we  are  unable 
to  class  the  virtues  and  often  the  behavior  of  the  grown  folk,  and  we  in  our 
loftiness  are  capable  of  ruining  their  reputations,  and  giving  them  a  name 
that  it  will  take  years  of  right  living  on  their  part  in  the  future  to  overcome, 
if  their  little  vagaries  do  not  suit  our  own  whims,  while  the  high  animal 
spirits  of  their  happy  years  lead  them  into  pranks  that  are  not  in  conformity 
with  our  own  staid  and  quiet  way  of  life,  in  which  the  fermentation  is  over ; 
and,  stern  critics  that  we  are,  we  sit  in  judgment  like  those  that  break  butter- 
flies upon  wheels.  They  would  never  conduct  themselves  in  this  fashion  if 
we  had  them,  or  if  we  had  had  them  in  season. 


Keeping  Silence. 

It  is  a  question  whether  these  views  are  not  better  hidden  in  the  depths 
of  our  own  consciousness  than  given  to  the  world  of  friends  and  neighbors. 
They  certainly  do  no  good  to  ourselves,  to  the  children,  or  to  the  parents  of 
the  children.  On  the  contrary,  the  expression  of  them  only  serves  to  exas- 
perate the  parents,  and  to  irritate  ourselves  to  still  further  expression,  till  one 
listening  would  suppose  from  our  conversation  that  all  the  children  we  knew 
were  candidates  for  the  gallows.  The  encouragement  of  these  views  may 
have,  besides,  a  hardening  and  injurious  effect  upon  ourselves,  which  would 
be  a  pity,  when  they  arise  from  so  evident  a  desire  to  improve  humanity,  for 
they  must  lead  us  all  the  time  into  the  habit  of  seeing  more  evil  than  good — a 
habit  whose  aim  is  easily  transferable  to  objects  of  more  advanced  years  and 
equal  terms,  and  they  must  cause  us  to  yield  as  unlovely  an  appearance  as 
those  do  who  do  not  care  for  children  at  all,  good  or  bad,  and  do  not  criticise 
their  behavior,  not  from  any  want  of  hostility,  but  from  complete  indiffer- 
ence; people  to  whom  children  are  like  flies  and  night-moths,  evils  to  be  en- 


THE  OPENING  SOUL  OF  CHILDHOOD. 


32o  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

dured,  since  there  is  no  way  of  being  rid  of  them  if  the  lamps  are  lighted. 
For  our  own  sakes,  then,  as  well  as  theirs,  if  we  can  not  praise  them,  it 
might  be  well  to  pause  before  letting  ourselves  get  into  the  habit  of  condemn- 
ing other  people's  children. 

Yet  in  some  respects,  if  we  make  no  loud  expression  of  it,  this  critical 
mood  of  mind  may  serve  our  own  mere  personal  comfort  in  the  long  run  as 
"Well  as  another  which  is  quite  at  variance  with  it;  for  if  in  the  other,  or  coun- 
terpart of  it,  we  might  be  of  some  benefit  to  the  little  people,  it  is  usually  at 
considerable  cost  to  ourselves.  It  is  then  not  the  case  of  condemning,  but  of 
loving  other  people's  children  too  much.  Of  course  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
too  much  love  in  the  world,  and,  if  there  were,  few  children  are  in  the  receipt 
•of  too  much  of  it ;  it  is  not  often  that  they  are  injured  by  its  possession  so 
much  as  by  its  lack.  There  is  love,  to  be  sure,  that  does  them  more  harm 
than  good ;  the  love  that  follows  them  after  parental  correction  and  tries  to 
soften  the  effect  of  it,  for  instance — a  poor  sort  of  love,  more  often  self-love 
than  pure  love  of  the  little  culprit  for  whose  better  good  the  correction  was 
administered.  But  the  love  of  self-sacrifice  that  forgets  itself  in  the  child, 
the  love  of  effort  that  takes  trouble  for  it,  remembers  that  the  atmosphere  of 
•childhood  is  carried  along  to  make  the  whole  atmosphere  and  temperament  of 
later  life,  and  sees  to  it  that  it  shall  be  a  roseate  one;  the  love  of  patience, 
that  stops  to  think  of  the  reason  why  before  saying  nay,  and  strains  a  point 
against  the  nay;  that  uses  all  preventive  power  to  hinder  wrong-doing  or  temp- 
tation to  wrong-doing,  instead  of  reserving  itself  to  punish  wrong-doing 
when  done — that  love,  indeed,  can  not  exist  in  too  great  quantity  or  force. 
Yet  that  is  for  the  child ;  for  ourselves,  at  first  glance,  there  would  seem  to  be 
no  question  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  giving  too  much  love  to  other 
people's  children  for  our  own  selfish  ease.  Our  love  may  help  to  make  the 
way  smooth  for  them,  but  how  is  it  going  to  work  with  us?  It  is  an  ignoble 
way  of  feeling,  it  must  be  admitted,  as  all  views  are  that  dwell  simply  on  the 
light  cast  on  our  own  future;  but  there  are  laws  of  self-preservation,  and  if 
there  is  no  instinct  to  warn  us,  then  experience  must  discover  that  whatever 
we  do  for  other  people's  children  we  must  do  for  love  of  them,  and  not  for 
love  of  ourselves,  for  in  the  end  the  likelihood  is  that  we  shall  be  forgotten  in 
the  matter,  and  our  love  return  upon  us  in  bitterness. 

Of  course  we  are  not  speaking  of  simple  liking  and  pleasant  sufferance, 
but  of  the  intense  and  yearning  affection  that  the  lonely  heart  extends  to  clasp 
round  the  little  child  in  the  house,  in  the  family,  or  in  the  neighborhood. 
Yet  with  all  that  yearning  affection,  one  to  whom  the  child  does  not  belong 
will  have,  as  a  general  thing,  reason  to  figure  less  and  less  in  the  life  and  thus 
in  the  thoughts  of  that  child  as  the  years  pass,  till  one  dwindles  at  first  into 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


321 


NECESSARY  THAT  THE  LITTLE  THINGS  SHOULD  BE  MADE  HAPPY. 

insufficiency  and  then  into  f orgetf ulness  and  the  oblivion  of  all  but  temporary 
presence.  Nor  does  one  always  have  to  wait  long  for  that  fate — which,  if 
possibly  it  may  not  come  at  all,  just  as  possibly  is  sure  to  come — for  no  sooner 
may  we  have  poured  out  the  fullness  of  our  tenderness  about  it,  and  made 
the  child  a  part  of  our  heart's  blood,  than  the  owners  of  it  can  take  it  from 
our  sight  and  grasp,  and  put  seas  and  continents  and  lifetimes  between  us. 
It  had  become  all  but  our  own  child,  and  is  snatched  out  of  our  arms;  and, 


322  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

so  far  as  we  are  affected  it  is  in  its  grave,  for  it  is  dead  to  us  in  just  the  de- 
gree that  the  unloving,  the  indifferent,  the  disliking,  or  the  cruel  parent 
chooses. 

What  are  we  to  do,  then? — love  nobody's  children?  It  would  be  a  dreary 
world  for  most  of  us  in  that  case  and  a  hard  one  for  all  the  little  people  who 
are  helped  along  their  way  by  love,  no  matter  whose.  It  is  a  necessity  of 
some  natures  to  love  that  would  leave  a  great  gap  in  life  if  unsatisfied,  and  if 
they  have  not  one  thing,  they  will  have  another,  and  will  give  the  love  that 
should  have  made  the  wilderness  blossom  like  a  rose  for  some  child  to  weeds 
and  stocks  and  stones,  or  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing. 

Feeling  with  the  poet,  however,  that  it  is 

"Better  to  have  loved  and  lost 
Than  never  to  have  loved  at  all," 

it  would  seem,  on  the  whole,  the  best  thing  even  for  ourselves,  and  our  own 
selfish  ease  ultimately,  to  forget  self  in  the  affair,  and  love  other  people's 
children  wherever  we  find  them,  since  one  is  so  much  the  happier  for  loving, 
for  having  loved,  for  having  love  to  remember,  and  since  our  small  quantity 
of  love  may  do  its  share  in  the  elevation  of  all  the  world,  however  slight  that 
share.  It  may  give  us  more  real  happiness  to  close  our  eyes  to  those  things 
in  children  which  show  that  they  belong  to  an  imperfect  race,  and  to  take  our 
draught  of  the  infinite  pleasure  of  loving  as  we  go.  And  perhaps  even  that 
love  may  be  retroactive  in  the  end,  nothing  being  lost  in  the  universe,  and 
soften  the  hearts  of  those  round  whom  it  was  shed ;  and  as  the  dreaded  and 
fateful  years  go  by,  these  so  loved  children  will  look  back  with  love  as  we 
have  looked  forward  with  it,  and  feel  for  the  old  all  that  indiscriminate  ten- 
derness which  we  have  felt  for  the  young,  and  we  ourselves  come  in  for  our 
portion. 

Amusing  the  Small  People. 

But  much  of  the  annoyance  that  other  people's  children  give  the  sojourner 
and  wayfarer  in  the  house  might  be  hindered  by  that  person's  taking  a  little 
pains  to  give  them  amusement  or  entertaining  instruction. 

If,  for  instance,  the  guest  should  take  out  some  drawing  materials,  how 
soon  would  every  noisy  child  become  a  quiet  spectator  of  the  magic  of  the 
working  fingers.  And  still  greater  quiet  may  be  evoked  by  giving  these 
children  paper,  or  cardboard,  with  pencils,  and  showing  them  how  to  use  the 
new  tools.  Many  people  have  a  notion  that  it  is  useless  to  instruct  a  child  in 
any  art  for  which  no  particular  talent  has  been  shown — the  art  of  drawing  for 
example.  But  every  child,  no  matter  in  what  condition,  even  the  child  of 


LOVE  OF  THE  CHILD  FOR  DRAWING. 


324  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

the  savage,  loves  to  make  a  picture.  To  these  unbelievers  unless  the  child  is 
found  making  his  own  colors,  and  cutting  hairs  from  the  cat's  tail  for  his 
brushes,  after  the  fashion  of  Benjamin  West,  and  securing  wonderful  effects 
with  chalk  and  blackboard,  red  lead  and  barn  door,  it  will  not  seem  worth 
while  to  cultivate  his  talent ;  and  even  if  it  should  seem  worth  while  then,  it 
will  be  thought  it  can  be  done  only  by  means  of  a  teacher  who  is  himself  an 
artist. 


With  Pencil  and  Paper. 

But  in  reality  it  is  well  to  teach  every  child  certain  of  the  rudiments 
of  the  various  arts,  and  the  very  effort  may  burst  the  shell  inclosing  the  germ 
of  some  capacity  for  them,  especially  in  this  very  matter  of  drawing,  since  an 
impulse  toward  the  imitation  of  shapes,  the  representation  of  outlines,  and 
the  expression  of  thoughts  by  means  of  a  picture,  is  instinctive  with  us  all, 
and  an  inheritance  from  the  primitive  man,  whose  only  writing  it  was;  and 
it  is  a  further  whim  of  ours  that,  strange  as  it  may  at  first  appear,  a  great 
deal  of  preliminary  instruction  may  be  given  by  the  mother  or  teacher  who 
can  not  herself,  perhaps,  draw  either  straight  line  or  circle.  Every  child  has 
some  inclination  in  this  direction ;  the  margins  of  all  his  school  books  are 
scratched  over  with  his  favorite  designs,  and  if  he  has  been  so  fortunate  as  to 
possess  a  shilling  box  of  colors,  the  pages  of  his  atlas  and  of  his  history  bear 
witness  to  his  aspiration,  and  perhaps  not  only  to  his  aspiration,  for  it  is  to  be 
doubted  if  Turner's  "Carthage"  ever  gave  the  artist  such  joy  as  the  well- 
daubed  prints  of  the  "Landing  of  the  Pilgrims, "  or  "Georgian  Girls  in  the 
Slave  Market,"  in  the  geography  book,  have  given  to  most  of  us  in  our  child- 
hood. It  is  no  instruction,  now,  to  take  the  pencil  and  paper  and  draw  the 
line  for  the  child  to  see  and  then  to  copy ;  he  would  be  copying  the  line,  not 
representing  the  object  to  be  drawn.  But  it  is  real  instruction  to  make  the 
child  actually  see  the  object,  and  then  set  down  on  paper  the  lines  that  answer 
to  what  he  sees.  William  Hunt  used  to  say  that  the  reason  we  do  not  draw 
an  object  correctly  is  because  we  do  not  see  it  correctly,  or  see  it  but  partially ; 
we  think  we  see  it,  and  see  the  whole  of  it;  but  if  we  do,  there  is  nothing  in 
the  world  to  hinder  our  setting  down  its  fac-simile.  And  thus  the  first  thing 
to  do  is  to  teach  the  child  to  see,  to  see  shape,  relation  of  lines,  shadow,  mass, 
relief,  dwelling  first  upon  proportions  and  not  till  afterward  on  details.  All 
that  can  be  done  before  the  child  has  taken  a  pencil  in  hand,  and  his  eye  may 
be  in  process  of  training  a  long  time  first,  and  a  long  time  afterward,  even 
while  he  is  practicing  on  simple  strokes  and  free  lines  before  an  object  is  put 
up  for  him  to  copy,  but  when  his  eye  is  somewhat  trained,  and  one  is  satis- 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


325 


MONUMENT  AT  NEW  PLYMOUTH   TO  THE 
PILGRIM  FATHERS. 

fied  that  he  has  seen  the  shape  of  a 
thing,  its  projection  and  its  proportion, 
and  its  light  and  shade,  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  not  represent  it  if 
there  is  any  skill  in  his  fingers,  and  he  then  will  learn  by  his  mistakes,  each 
one  of  which  to  the  right  gazer  is  a  step  on  the  upward  ladder.  There  are 
some,  it  is  to  be  acknowledged,  who  have  no  finger  knack,  who  can  but  copy, 
and  that  laboriously,  by  line  and  rule,  for  whom  form  has  no  attraction,  who 
can  not  interpret  color  in  black  and  white,  and  can  not  be  drilled  into  the  ap- 
preciation of  masses  and  values;  who,  caught  early,  may  be  enlightened  to 
some  extent  only  sufficient  to  show  the  futility  of  the  effort  so  far  as  any  great 
results  are  concerned,  yet  doubtless  the  instruction  relative  to  shape,  propor- 
tion, and  shade  has  opened  their  eyes  to  what  would  never  have  been  seen  by 
them  without  it.  while  within  a  limited  degree  the  effort  to  do  more  has  been 
of  real  benefit. 

Whether  or  not  one  is  going  to  make  pictures  that  will  stir  the  heart  with 
dreams  of  beauty,  and  live  when  the  hand  that  created  them  is  dust,  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly desirable  from  a  utilitarian  point  of  view,  that  one  should  be  led  to 


326  STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS. 

"look  carefully  and  see  clearly,  leaving  imagination  out  of  the  question.  A 
drawing  is  but  a  report  of  what  one  sees,  hand  and  eye  working  together;  if 
one  can  execute  it,  so  much  the  better;  but  if  that  is  not  to  be,  even  the 
verbal  report  will  be  the  more  accurate  for  any  such  early  training  as  may 
have  been  given  to  the  eye.  Just  as  a  matter  of  business  the  advantage  of 
the  instruction  is  easily  seen ;  the  traveler,  whose  eye  has  been  early  taught 
its  functions  and  who  would  write  the  story  of  his  sight-seeing,  needing  no 
other  hand  than  his  own  to  illustrate  his  work,  doubles  his  profits;  and  if  un- 
able to  do  so  much  as  that,  is  yet  able  to  write  with  a  sharpness  of  outline 
that  bites  into  the  memory,  while  the  report  of  the  traveler  who  sees  all  things 
but  vaguely  and  pleasantly  is  blurred  and  forgotten ;  and  so  of  the  mecha- 
nician who  needs  no  duller  brain  with  apter  fingers  to  stand  between  him  and 
the  model  of  his  machine,  and  is  able  to  sketch  his  own  ideas  as  they  come  to 
him ;  of  the  naturalist  whose  specimens  can  not  evade  his  pencil  and  vanish 
altogether,  and  of  countless  others.  Thus  in  the  light  of  the  relations  of 
money-getting,  of  science,  of  convenience,  apart  from  any  considerations  of  a 
possible  genius  to  be  developed,  of  a  talent  not  to  be  wrapped  in  a  napkin,  it 
were  well  to  give  every  child  instruction  in  the  art  of  drawing,  encourage- 
ment to  his  endeavors,  and  praise  to  his  success;  not  that  unjust  and  indis- 
criminate praise  which,  not  being  deserved,  makes  a  fool  of  one,  but  that 
praise  which  obliges  a  person  to  live  up  to  its  standard,  remembering  the 
while  if  the  talent  really  exists,  it  is  there  for  a  purpose  and  to  be  fostered 
toward  an  end,  and  that,  not  existing,  it  would  be  a  forgery  upon  nature  to 
pretend  that  it  was  there. 

But  besides  the  pictorial  way,  there  is  many  another  fashion  in  which  the 
children  can  be  beguiled  from  noise  and  mischief.  Let  the  person  who  wishes 
to  bring  peace  but  of  their  little  pandemonium  provide  herself  with  a  black- 
board, easily  procurable  anywhere,  and  provide  the  children  with  slates,  and 
tell  them  they  are  going  to  have  a  play  with  the  round  world  on  which  they 
live. 


A  New  Game. 

Every  one  remembers  the  tears  and  struggles  which  the  really  simple  and 
delightful  study  of  geography  used  to  cost;  but  there  is  a  way  of  making  it 
a  charming  amusement.  Let  our  friend  in  question  take  chalk  crayon  and 
make  a  map  of  an  island  on  the  blackboard,  not  at  all,  however,  out  of  his  or 
her  own  head,  but  according  to  the  instructions  the  children  shall  give.  This 
map  is  then  to  be  transferred  from  the  blackboard  to  the  slates.  It  was  easy 
enough  to  measure  the  table  by  a  chalk  and  string,  and  order  a  line  of  that 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS 


OF  MAKING  IT  A  CHARMING  AMUSEMENT. 


length  to  be  measured  and  drawn  on  the  board  ;  but  it  is  a  different  thing  to 
transfer  that  line  to  their  slates,  and  thus  learn  at  once  the  significance  of  the 
*  'scale."  This  done  at  last,  though,  a  map  of  the  school-room  is  made;  then 
one  of  the  way  to  school,  with  the  streets  and  paths  diverging  from  it.  From 
this  arises  the  necessity  of  knowing  the  points  of  the  compass  —  nothing  being 
taught  till  its  need  is  felt  —  and  the  instruction  is  given  in  a  calisthenic  exer- 


328  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

else,  in  which  the  children  are  formed  in  a  hollow  square,  facing  outward, 
and  the  sides  of  the  square  are  marched  to  their  respective  points  till  they  are 
understood  and  remembered,  upon  which  their  application  to  the  map  on  the 
board  is  mere  play.  When  sufficient  elementary  knowledge  has  thus  been 
acquired,  intelligence  is  called  more  positively  into  play,  and  the  children  are 
told,  for  instance,  as  one  way  of  doing  this,  that  they  may  colonize  an  island. 
A  rough  sketch,  a  sort  of  land  in  the  distance,  being  made  on  the  board, 
every  point  in  the  shape  of  the  island  is  left  to  be  arranged  by  the  children, 
who  are  to  give  reasons  for  their  decisions.  Some  would  have  it  a  smooth 
plain,  such  as  a  hoop  could  be  trundled  on  all  day;  some  are  for  mountains 
and  adventures.  Mountains  carry  the  day,  and  determine  the  nature  of  the 
shores.  The  reason  assigned  for  the  choice  of  mountains  is  that  they  are 
places  for  mines ;  iron  and  copper,  if  not  silver  and  gold,  will  be  wanted  in 
the  colony — mines  will  afford  them ;  pasturage  will  be  wanted  for  cattle,  too 
—the  mountain-sides  will  give  it;  rain  will  be  wanted — the  mountain-tops 
arrest  the  clouds  and  produce  it ;  lastly,  as  the  teacher  suggests,  rivers  will  be 
wanted.  Shall  the  rivers  flow  from  the  sea  into  the  mountains  ?  Criticism 
is  invited.  Who  ever  heard  of  water's  running  up  hill?  The  teacher  draws 
a  river,  starting  nowhere  in  particular  and  going  anywhere  in  general,  and 
requires  the  pupils  to  say  why  it  is  not  right,  till  they  see  that  nature  does 
nothing  at  haphazard ;  and  rivers,  as  well  as  other  things,  always  run  from 
some  cause  to  some  end,  so  that  in  this  island  they  must  rise  among  the 
hills  in  the  springs  that  the  rains  and  vapors  make  and  swell,  and  then  flow 
downward  to  their  outlet  where  they  feed  the  sea.  And  here,  if  the  teacher 
is  able,  a  digression  explains  the  dead  rivers  of  California  and  the  rivers  lost 
upon  the  desert.  But  why  do  they  want  rivers  at  all  on  the  island  ?  For 
roads,  one  says;  for  fishing,  says  another;  to  drain  the  lands;  to  water  them ; 
to  turn  wheels ;  to  carry  merchandise.  As  voice  after  voice  resounds,  a  zest 
springs  up,  till  the  scene  is  as  eager,  if  not  as  clamorous,  as  the  gold  room. 
And  what  kind  of  rivers  is  wanted  for  these  things?  is  next  asked.  For  car- 
rying merchandise,  let  us  say.  A  stream  full  of  eddies  and  rapids  that  a 
vessel  must  skirt  and  struggle  with,  or  a  deep  and  quiet  one  that  upbuoys  the 
vessel  which  the  wind  carries  along?  And  for  turning  wheels — shall  it  be  a 
slow  and  sluggish  current,  or  a  swift  one  full  of  falls?  All  these  things  hav- 
ing been  settled,  the  map  of  the  island  drawn  in  a  satisfactory  manner,  and 
the  colony  being  supposed  to  be  on  the  way  to  it,  the  teacher  asks  if  it  is  de- 
sirable to  plant  the  colony  in  the  interior  or  on  the  sea-shore;  and  the  sub- 
ject being  well  weighed,  and  the  opposing  reasons  given,  it  is  resolved  to 
have  it  on  the  sea-shore,  on  account  of  the  unexplored  and  uncleared  nature 
of  the  interior,  and  from  considerations  of  safety  and  of  accessibility — all  of 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  329 

which  the  children  appreciate  quite  as  much  as  they  would  the  exploits  of 
Hans  or  the  escapes  of  Gretchen  in  their  story-books.  In  this  method  the 
colony  being  established,  so  far  as  its  geographical  condition  is  concerned, 
it  is  proposed  to  send  off  a  second  colony  to  a  point  farther  in  the  interior. 
Shall  they  strike  out  at  a  venture?  Follow  the  river,  cries  one.  Follow  the 
river,  by  all  means,  and  have  your  way  open  behind  you.  But  how  far? — to 
the  source? — to  the  falls?  To  the  falls.  There  they  are,  to  move  machinery, 
to  saw  lumber,  to  grind  corn ;  ships  can  go  up  no  farther ;  the  tide  rises  no 
farther.  The  falls,  then,  are  at  the  head  of  tide-water. 


Another  Game. 

Sometimes  this  kind  of  exercise  alternates  with  one  which  affords  as  much 
pleasure  as  the  old  game  of  ''Dr.  Busby. "  This  is  a  game  played  with  cards, 
evenly  distributed,  and  on  the  back  of  each  of  which  is  written  the  name  of  a 
town  or  city,  and  on  the  face,  in  double  rows,  a  statement  of  the  usual  imports 
and  exports  of  the  place.  Any  one  can  prepare  these  cards  by  the  help  of  a 
school  gazetteer.  The  scholar  who  begins  the  game,  examining  the  cards 
allotted,  finds  that  Rio  Janeiro,  it  maybe,  has  rose-wood,  diamonds  and  tapioca 
to  export,  with  other  tropical  staples,  and  is  in  sore  need  of  linen  for  her  ladies, 
cotton  goods  for  her  colored  people,  cordage  for  her  ships,  and  straightway 
demands  these  articles.  Liverpool  can  furnish  them,  and  take  Rio  Janeiro's 
goods  in  payment.  If,  then,  the  scholar  having  the  card  Liverpool  does  not 
immediately  cry  "Here!"  the  Rio  Janeiro  merchant  can  take  that  card  with- 
out further  ado.  If,  however,  the  possessor  of  it  does  cry  "Here!"  then  Rio 
Janeiro  can  not  take  it  unless  able  to  give  its  name — Liverpool.  But  suppos- 
ing it  taken,  the  Rio  Janeiro  merchant  then  looks  at  the  Liverpool  card  and 
sees  hardware  to  spare  there,  and  cutlery  and  cotton  goods;  an  immense  busi- 
ness to  be  done,  in  short,  in  all  sorts  of  exports  and  imports;  and  if  Monrovia, 
glistening  like  the  lady  in  the  dentist's  chair  with  gold,  gums,  and  ivory, 
does  not  answer  at  the  call  for  them,  or  for  palm-oil  and  feathers  and  spices, 
then  Monrovia  also  goes  to  swell  the  stock  of  the  first  merchant.  But  if,  on 
the  contrary,  Rio  Janeiro,  having  asked  for  the  Liverpool  goods,  or  for  the 
Monrovian  or  other,  can  not  give  the  name  of  the  place  furnishing  them — 
Liverpool  or  Monrovia,  or  as  the  case  may  be — then  the  Rio  Janeiro  card  is 
forfeited  to  the  owner  of  the  card  with  that  place  on  the  back,  who  then  pro- 
ceeds to  make  exchanges  until  brought  up  with  some  round  turn  which  affords 
opportunity  to  the  next. 

Thus  a  knowledge  of  the  world  and  of  its  balances  and  counterbalances 
is  gained  that  books  could  hardly  teach,  and  that  is  usually  only  half  learned 
in  the  maturer  life  of  the  man  of  business.  It  is  play  that  takes  the  place  of 


330  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

experience;  and  not  only  have  the  thought-producing  qualities  been  early 
strengthened  and  ripened  for  service,  but  the  little  people  have  had  almost 
as  much  pleasure  as  if  they  had  gone  campaigning  and  playing  pirate,  and 
peace  has  reigned  where  they  made  racket  and  riot  before. 

It  is  only  a  boy  that  needs  the  best  of  interest  and  amusement  at  home 
that  can  furnish  such  a  record  of  misdeeds,  of  good  inclinations  and  bad  re- 
sults as  Laddy  did  when  all  unintentionally  he  played  the  burglar  himself. 


The  Story  of  Laddy's  Burglar. 

The  great  shining  wheel,  shod  with  silence  and  swiftness,  sweeping  on 
like  a  spirit — a  bicycle — was  that  which,  of  all  created  things,  Laddy  longed 
for  most.  He  saw  the  club  roll  by,  he  heard  their  warning  bells  tinkle  like 
drops  of  sweetest  sound,  he  saw  their  tiny  red  lights  flashing  in  the  dark,  and 
his  soul  was  full  of  desire  for  this  steed  which  bears  one  as  the  outspread 
wings  of  the  Afrite  Danhash  carried  Badoura  to  Camaralzaman,  a  sort  of  visi- 
ble whirlwind.  For  Laddy  to  see  one  of  these  lofty  riders  on  his  giant  wheel, 
whose  spokes,  now  viewless  with  motion,  now  dazzling  as  the  sun's  rays, 
seemed  to  be  parts  of  the  living  thing,  here  slipping  out  of  sight  along  the 
road,  here  mounting  a  hill  and  outlined  on  the  sky,  was  to  experience  the 
same  ecstasy  of  pleasure  that  you  or  I  might  have  over  a  picture  or  a  poem. 
And  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  become,  by  hook  or  by  crook,  chiefly  crook, 
just  such  a  poem  himself,  if  his  father,  who  could  amply  afford  it,  would  lis- 
ten to  reason  and  buy  a  bicycle.  Grass  never  grew  under  Laddy's  feet,  es- 
pecially in  the  winter,  and  having  mastered  the  unruly  creature,  by  dint  of 
hiring  and  borrowing,  he  had  never  lost  a  chance  of  presenting  to  his  father 
such  considerations  as  his  tireless  running  of  errands,  and  general  good  be- 
havior in  the  family,  to  the  effect  that  he  had  fairly  earned  his  gratification. 

Laddy  felt  himself  a  very  important  member  of  the  family,  and  had  no 
more  conception  of  his  real  standing  there  than  many  of  us  have  who,  half 
unconsciously,  wonder  how  the  world  would  get  on  without  us.  It  was  a 
jolly  family,  on  the  whole,  that  which  was  thus  indebted  to  him,  and  it  was 
such  a  numerous  one,  that  it  could  hardly  have  experienced  stagnation  had 
there  been  no  Laddy.  There  were  a  father  and  mother  and  grandmother,  of 
course ;  it  would  have  been  a  queer  family  that  did  not  begin  with  those. 
And  then  there  was  a  great-grandmother,  too — and  it  was  not  every  family 
that  had  a  great-grandmother,  if  she  was  so  disabled  that  she  could  neither 
speak  nor  move,  but  only  sit  all  day  in  her  chair  and  look  about  her  with  a 
pair  of  little  sunken  eyes,  that  blinked  as  the  stars  blink  in  heaven,  and  gave 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS 


HE    SAW    THE    CLUB    ROLL    BY. 

you  the  idea  of  her  belonging-  already  to  some  other  world  than  this.  And 
then  there  was  Aunt  Mat,  who  did  everything  for  everybody ;  and  all  the  serv- 
ants, particularly  Michael;  and  the  three  older  sisters  and  their  two  brothers; 
and  the  half  dozen  children,  more  or  less,  of  the  younger  brood,  who  made 
noise  enough  for  nil-  the  children  that  followed  the  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin. 
For  when  Sacie  was  not  tittering,  Katharine  was  singing,  or  Lucy  was 
bawling,  or  Tom  was  whistling,  or  Johnny  was  playing  his  jews-harp,  or  they 
were  all  shouting — Laddy's  shout  being  a  roar.  They  banged  on  the  piano, 
tramped  up  the  stairs,  slid  down  the  banister,  and  would  perhaps  have  swung 
on  the  chandeliers  if  they  could  have  reached  them.  And  every  little  while 
there  was  a  fearful  agitation  all  over  the  place,  for  Laddy  was  in  the  river,  or 
Johnny  was  being  brought  out  of  the  river,  or  the  whole  crew  of  them,  with 
Tom  for  captain,  were  adrift  upon  the  river.  The  elder  sisters  painted  and 
embroidered  and  practiced,  and  went  driving,  and  young  Sylvester  came  to 


332  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

see  them — came  very  often,  by  the  way,  and  stayed  very  long,  and  always 
took  Sophy  down  to  the  gate  with  him.  Sometimes  Rosy  and  Katharine  were 
found  rendered  useless  by  meddling  with  the  clay  of  which  the  three  elder 
sisters  had  been  moulding  jars  and  vases ;  or  Sacie  and  Lucy  might  be  seen 
smeared  from  ear  to  ear  with  Laura's  water-colors,  or  with  their  gowns  sewed 
up  in  Eleanor's  flosses  and  crewels;  or  half  of  Sophia's  music  would  have 
been  taken  to  make  Johnny's  kite,  which  had  ended  by  falling  into  the  water 
and  going  out  to  the  sea.  Yes,  it  was  a  jolly  family,  Laddy  thought;  es- 
pecially when  time  came  toward  Christmas  and  Aunt  Mat  was  helping  the 
kitchen-girl  pick  over  currants  and  giving  any  loiterer  a  good  handful,  and 
grandmother  was  showing  them  how  to  make  sausage  meat,  and  Laura, 
streaked  with  chrome  yellow  from  top-knot  to  shoestring,  was  learning  the 
mystery  of  squash  pies,  and  the  little  people  were  allowed  to  slice  the  citron, 
and  everybody  was  busy  with  a  secret.  Nothing  could  be  more  to  Laddy's 
mind  than  this  state  of  affairs,  unless  it  was  the  building  of  the  Tower  of 
Babel.  He  could  think  of  but  one  thing  possible  in  the  way  of  making  life 
still  livelier,  and  that  was  possession  of  the  bicycle  which  he  had  told  every- 
body was  to  be  his  share  of  the  Christmasing,  and  which  he  meant  to  ride 
down  the  front  stairs,  if  not  the  banisters!  "I  like  to  see  things  fly  round!" 
said  Laddy,  leaving  one  to  guess  whether  he  meant  things  in  general,  or 
only  the  bicycle.  His  mother  used  to  say  that  it  was  no  wonder  she  was  ill; 
the  wonder  was  that  anybody  was  well  in  that  house. 

I  suppose  it  is  to  be  admitted,  before  going  further,  that  Laddy  was  the 
bad  boy  of  the  family.  Yet  he  was  a  taking  little  scamp,  with  the  honest 
wide  blue  eyes  in  his  sunburned  face — a  face  where  no  amount  of  tan  could 
obliterate  a  swarm  of  dimples  that  made  his  smile  as  sweet  as  honey.  For 
all  that,  no  one  loved  a  bit  of  roguery  so  well  as  Laddy  did.  It  was  he  that 
tied  Lucy's  and  Sadie's  long  braids  together,  so  that  when  they  rose  to  go 
different  ways  he  might  enjoy  the  consequences.  It  was  he  that  made 
"apple-pie"  of  Johnny's  sheets  and  seasoned  it  with  red  pepper.  It  was  he 
that  scared  the  whole  parlor  by  coming  down  with  a  candle  in  his  hand  and 
beginning  to  climb  the  mantel-shelf  as  if  preparatory  to  crawling  on  the  ceil- 
ing like  a  fly,  walking  in  his  sleep  when  he  was  really  wide-awake,  and  laugh- 
ing so  gayly  and  sweetly  when,  like  a  bottle  of  medicine  he  was  taken  and 
shaken,  that  nobody  could  be  very  angry  with  him.  It  was  he  that  emptied 
Rosy's  doll  of  its  stuffing  and  filled  the  body  with  red-cedar  sawdust,  leaving 
a  little  crack  in  one  arm  so  that  when  Rosy  saw  the  red  sawdust  trickling  out 
she  really  thought  her  doll  was  bleeding  to  death.  It  was  he  that  tied  all  the 
bells  in  the  house  with  one  string,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  night  woke  all  the 
sleepers  with  their  furious  ringing.  And, in  general,  one  might  say  it  was  he 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  333 

that  cried  peace,  peace,  when  there  was  no  peace !  And  there  was  nobody  like 
Laddy  for  getting  out  of  a  scrape.  He  never  looked  guilty.  When  on  Sun- 
day he  was  bringing  the  pot  of  baked  beans,  suspended  on  a  string,  from  the 
baker's,  and  met  the  people  going  to  church,  he  accidentally  hit  the  pot  against 
a  lamp-post,  and  knocked  out  its  bottom,  so  that  the  steaming  beans  poured 
in  a  mortifying  mess  over  the  sidewalk — mortifying  to  any  one  but  Laddy ; 
but  Laddy  never  once  glanced  down  at  the  ruin ;  he  simply  opened  his  fist  and 
dropped  the  string  and  passed  on  as  if  they  were  anybody's  beans  but  his; 
he  had  nothing  to  do  with  them,  and  didn't  know  there  was  such  a  thing 
as  a  baked  bean  in  the  world,  in  fact.  Ex pede  Herculem. 

Perhaps  the  worst  thing  Laddy  ever  did  was But  I  hesitate  to  tell 

you.  It  really  was  too  shocking.  Still,  I  don't  know — if  you  will  promise 
never  to  speak  of  it — and  then  I  hardly  think  he  realized  what  he  was  doing. 
If  he  and  Johnny  had  not  been  left  alone  that  day — but  they  were  alone  with 
great-grandmother,  and  had  been  told  to  take  care  of  her,  and  see  that  she 
didn't  fall  into  the  fire,  till  grandmother  came  back.  Grandmother  herself 
seemed  almost  a  young  girl  in  comparison  with  poor  old  great -grandmother, 
who  never  stirred  from  the  moment  she  was  put  into  her  arm-chair  in  the 
morning  till  she  was  taken  out  of  it  at  night.  Laddy  sat  looking  at  her  with 
I  know  not  what  strange  fancies  flitting  through  his  mind.  Possibly  there 
came  over  him  such  a  sensation  as  one  might  have  when  looking  down  the 
crater  of  a  burned-out  volcano,  or  over  a  picture  where  the  painting  had  been 
wiped  out.  For  all  at  once  he  whispered  to  Johnny,  "Larks,  Johnny,  larks! 
let's  do  it!"  How  far  the  little  wretches  would  have  gone  in  their  wicked 
work  nobody  knows ;  for  they  were  interrupted  by  grandmother,  who  had 
thought  matters  were  too  quiet  to  be  wholesome  in  there,  and  who  seized 
them  both  and  shook  them  till  they  did  not  know  whether  they  were  on  this 
star  or  on  several  others.  And  then  the  little  torments  ran  back  to  their 
mother  at  last,  saying  they  couldn't  stay  with  great-grandmother  any  longer, 
because  grandmother  was  so  cross!  Laddy  was  a  good  deal  younger  then 
than  at  this  present  writing,  but  I  am  afraid  he  had  some  reprehensible  be- 
ginnings in  him. 

Yet,  after  all,  I  suppose  I  could  find  as  many  good  things  to  tell  of  him. 
I  remember  that  once  he  gave  his  own  shoes  to  a  beggar,  and  would  have 
gone  barefooted  all  summer  if  he  had  not  known  of  a  pair  of  Tom's  that 
fitted  him ;  he  was  always  polite  to  the  cook,  and  she,  at  any  rate,  did  not 
believe  it  had  anything  to  do  with  sly  turnovers  now  and  then;  he  never 
robbed  birds'  nests — he  had  business  with  his  marbles,  indeed,  at  birds'-nest- 
ing  time;  he  never  called  a  boy  names  behind  his  back,  and  he  always  gave 
away  the  core.  In  spite  of  everything,  he  was  an  affectionate  little  fellow, 


334  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

and  loved  his  people  as  much  as  he  tormented  them.  If  his  mother  sternly 
called  him  "Lawrence!"  it  hurt  him  more  than  a  whipping  from  his  father 
did. 

Laddy  had  been  busy  several  weeks  with  chips  and  tools,  frequently  run- 
ning in  from  his  place  of  seclusion  to  ask  on  what  day  of  the  month  Christmas 
came  this  year,  and  forgetting  again  as  soon  as  he  was  told.  He  had  been 
fashioning  a  foot-rest  for  great-grandmother,  having  often  exercised  himself, 
since  the  enormity  of  his  intended  behavior  on  a  certain  previous  occasion  had 
been  felt,  in  doing  one  little  odd  turn  and  another  for  the  poor  old  lady's 
comfort.  Now,  by  the  help  of  the  lathe,  bright-headed  tacks  and  varnish,  he 
had  succeeded  in  quite  an  effective  bit  of  work.  With  his  head  first  on  this 
side  and  then  on  that,  he  contemplated  it  in  satisfaction,  as  he  thought  of  poor 
old  great-grandmother's  tired  feet  resting  on  its  soft  cushion,  whose  down  he 
had  himself  plucked,  last  summer  on  the  farm,  from  under  the  wings  of  the 
old  gander,  at  the  imminent  risk  of  his  life;  and  he  found  something  a  little 
touching  in  the  contrast  between  the  rest  of  this  cushion  and  the  soul  of  speed 
and  motion  in  the  bicycle  for  which  he  had  such  a  raging  desire.  Bobbins, 
and  sheaths,  and  various  other  small  wooden  trifles  had  his  carpentry  devised 
for  the  rest,  and  he  only  finished  the  last  as  the  girls  were  hanging  up  the 
green  and  the  bells  were  ringing  for  Christmas  Eve.  Having  deposited  his. 
little  accumulation  in  safe  hiding,  he  went  to  bed,  answering  questions  as  to 
his  gifts  in  rather  surly  fashion,  in  order  to  avoid  having  more  of  them  to 
answer,  and  waited  breathlessly,  till  every  one  in  the  house  should  be  asleep, 
that  he  might  steal  down  secretly  and  dispose  of  them  among  the  array  of  the 
other  gifts. 

It  had  seemed  to  Laddy  as*  if  that  Christmas  Eve  would  never  come.  He 
had  told  his  mother  that  he  wanted  new  skates;  and  to  his  father  he  had  been 
eloquent  on  the  charms  of  that  or  any  other  bicycle.  Grandmother  would 
probably  give  him  a  little  purse  of  money— and  he  wanted  money  sadly; 
Johnny,  he  knew  pretty  certainly,  was  going  to  give  him  his  ball;  and  Rosy, 
and  Lucy,  and  Sacie,  and  Katharine,  had  united  their  funds  toward  a  knife 
with  a  pair  of  scissors  at  one  end.  What  Tom  had  in  store  for  him,  what 
Laura  and  Eleanor  and  Sophia,  not  to  speak  of  his  grown-up  and  prospering 
brothers  Will  and  Harry,  had  prepared  for  him,  he  did  not  venture  to  imagine 
— something  very  desirable  without  a  doubt,  for  when  Christmas  came  Laddy 
knew  that  all  his  sins  were  condoned  and  forgotten. 

How  long  it  took  that  red  sunset  to  fade  into  orange  over  the  snowf 
How  slow  the  stars  were  about  coming  out,  how  the  family  dallied  about 
getting  through  tea,  and  what  a  tittering  fracas  Katharine  and  Lucy  and  the 
rest  of  them  had  to  make  in  putting  their  paper  parcels  in  convenient  places 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


335 


for  their  elders  to 
distribute  by  direc- 
tion !  What  fools 
girls  were !  And 
when  up-stairs  at 
length,  what  a 
splashing  and  chat- 
tering, what  danc- 
ing about  from 
room  to  room  of  the 
little  night-gowned 
figures,  and  what 
choruses  of  glad 
giggles  about  noth- 
ing, till  the  hush 
of  heavily-breath- 
ing slumber  came 
and  found  him  still 
waiting,  waiting 
for  the  elder  people 
to  seek  their  sleep 
in  turn.  He  watch- 
ed the  stars  through 
the  uncurtained 
window  while  he 
tried  to  keep  his 
eyes  open;  they 
seemed  to  get 
caught  in  the  huge 
pine  boughs,  and  to 
make  thin  streams 
of  white  fire  there ; 
then  came  an  aurora 
borealis,  like  a  web  of  white  gauze  burning  and  shaking  over  the  whole 
heavens;  he  thought  of  the  dreams  stepping  about  from  pillow  to  pillow,  and 
he  was  pretty  sure  that  he  had  been  asleep  himself  when  he  started  with  a  ray 
of  the  moon  in  his  face,  to  find  the  house  so  still  that  it  was  plain  everybody, 
young  and  old,  were  in  what  he  called  the  arms  of  Murphy. 

Making  quite  sure  of  it,  Laddy  slipped  out  of  bed,  and  gathered  his  foot- 
rest,  and  bobbins,  and  knitting  sheaths,  'and  brackets,   and  their  remainder> 


LADDY  SLIPPED    OUT    OF    BED. 


336  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

into  his  arms,  and  tiptoed  down  the  thickly  carpeted  stairs  to  the  sitting- 
room,  where  everything  else  was  already  in  place  and  waiting  for  the  morn- 
ing. 

And  what  a  scene  it  was!  The  fire  was  out  upon  the  hearth,  the  fire  that 
it  was  Michael's  pride  to  build  every  morning,  and  the  bulging  stockings 
hung  from  the  nails  driven  into  a  long  board  laid  upon  the  mantel-shelf. 
Laddy  knew  of  old  that  there  were  only  jokes  in  the  stockings,  the  candy 
mouse,  the  toy  fiddle,  the  china  dog.  The  real  presents  were  laid  out  on 
tables  at  either  side  of  the  chimney  place;  Aunt  Mat  had  seen  to  it  all.  There 
was  the  silver  cream  jug  that  mamma  had  wanted  when  these  new  aesthetic 
things  made  her  tired  of  her  old  silver;  there  were  the  engraved  onyx  but- 
tons for  papa  from  the  big  boys,  and  the  driving  blanket,  wrought  by  the 
fingers  of  the  older  girls;  there  was  the  sealskin  sacquethat  Eleanor  had  been 
sighing  for  ever  since  he  could  recollect,  and  that  now  everybody  had  joined 
in  giving  her;  and  the  brooch  for  grandmother  of  a  braid  of  gray  hair  set  in 
seed  pearls;  and  there  was  Rosy's  new  doll,  as  big  as  she  was;  and  a  fur  cap, 
yes,  a  fur  cap  for  himself,  for  if  L-a-w-r-e-n-c-e  didn't  spell  Laddy,  what  did 
it  spell?  And  there  were  some  gold  bangles  for  Laura — only  Will  and  Harry 
could  afford  to  make  pre'sents  like  that — he  should  himself,  some  day.  And 
a  lace-pin  in  the  shape  of  a  fan,  made  of  something  like  sky-blue  sealing-wax 
—Laddy  was  not  acquainted  with  turquoises — for  Sophia;  and  what  was  this 
for  Sophia,  too?  A  pair  of  great  white  diamond  ear-rings,  winking  and  blaz- 
ing like  the  sun  in  the  dew.  Laddy  started  back,  and  then  looked  again  in 
virtuous  indignation.  Was  Sophia  engaged  to  anybody  without  telling  him  ? 
Was  that  tall,  dark  Sylvester  fellow  coming  here  to  take  Sophia  away?  And 
Sophia  was  his  favorite  sister!  And  here  were  presents  from  his  people  to 
Sophia,  as  their  little  labels  said^-a  great  pearl  ring  from  the  Sylvester 
mother,  and  a  curious  piece  of  paper,  folded  like  his  composition  on  the  Four 
Seasons,  from  the  father;  he  opened  it — for  he  had  seen  bonds  before — a 
United  States  bond  for  a  thousand  dollars.  Well,  that  was  a  great  go! 
Grandmother's  gold  thimble,  the  smoked  pearl  pencil-cases,  the  silver  pocket- 
knives,  the  slippers,  and  smoking-caps,  and  afghans,  and  silk  socks,  and  all 
the  rest,  fell  into  insignificance. 

And  nobody  had  told  him !  As  the  thought  recurred  he  began  to  feel  ex- 
ceedingly wide  awake;  he  was  of  no  account  at  all  in  the  family;  even  Muff 
and  Tippet,  the  cats,  knew  more  of  what  was  going  on.  And  thinking  it 
over  he  shrank  back  unconsciously  into  the  yet  warm  corner  of  the  fireplace, 
where  he  was  quite  in  shadow,  while  the  great  moonbeam  that  had  waked 
him  fell  into  the  room  and  lay  over  the  two  tables  and  all  the  beautiful  ob- 
jects glittering  there,  struck  th6se  stones  sparkling  like  imperishable  drops 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  337 

of  dew,  that  pearl  white  as  concentrated  moonshine  itself,  the  blood-red 
onyxes,  the  turquoises,  blue  as  Eleanor's  eyes,  struck  and  glorified  all  that 
store  where  the  love  was  even  more  than  the  treasure.  By  the  merest  acci- 
dent, as  Laddy  looked  along  this  display,  his  eye  fell  upon  the  mirror,  and  he 
saw  the  whole  thing  faintly  repeated,  with  dim  colors  and  dark  flashes  and 
the  hoar  frost  of  the  moonshine.  And  in  another  moment  he  had  seen  some- 
thing else;  he  had  seen  the  figure,  the  shadow,  the  vague  outline  of  a  man 
in  the  doorway! 

Laddy  was  a  born  fighter.  To  spring  and  grab  the  poker,  and  to  confront 
the  man,  crouching,  with  the  mouth  of  his  bag  just  opened  to  sweep  all  the 
precious  things  into  it,  took  him  but  an  instant.  "You  clear  out!"  he  cried, 
*'just  the  way  you  came!  Or  if  I  can't  kill  you  myself,  I'll  make  such  a  noise 
that  somebody  else  will!  There's  the  man  in  the  house,  and  my  father,  and 

my  big  brothers,  and" the  fellow,  who  did  not  know  Laddy  had  carefully 

closed  the  door  leading  from  the  stairway,  lest  his  own  proceedings  should  be 
Tieard,  had  turned  and  fled  without  waiting  to  hear  the  whole  list  of  his 
enemies;  the  sight  of  Laddy,  whose  voice  could  raise  [the  house,  was  enemy 
enough.  He  tried  to  hit  Laddy  a  clip  first,  but  Laddy. dodged  it  and  followed 
liim,  brandishing  his  poker  with  one  hand,  and  tucking  up  his  little  night- 
gown with  the  other,  and  putting  down  and  hasping  after  him  the  window 
through  which  the  burglar  leaped. 

Nobody  ever  felt  more  like  a  man  than  Laddy  did  at  that  moment.  The 
"bed-rooms  were  quite  remote,  the  inner  hall  door  was  closed,  and  people  were 
tired  and  sleeping  soundly,  so  nobody  had  heard  him,  or,  if  any  one  had  heard, 
it  was  thought  he  was  talking  in  his  sleep,  and  thus  he  alone  and  by  himself 
liad  put  a  house-breaker  to  flight!  He  had  put  a  house-breaker  to  flight,  and 
yet  his  father  would  not  let  him  have  an  air-gun!  He  went  back  to  the  place 
of  the  presents,  and  there  they  still  shone  as  calmly  as  if  nobody  had  just 
tried  to  sweep  them  into  a  bag.  Somebody  would  be  trying  again ;  it  would 
never  be  given  up  so.  He  would  wait  a  while,  and  see  what  would  happen. 

What  a  very  imprudent  thing  it  was,  after  all,  to  leave  such  valuables 
unguarded  in  this  way,  thought  Laddy,  as  he  again  surveyed  them  all.  What 
if  somebody  had  stolen  them; — it  would  have  been  a  pretty  how  d 'you  do! 
People  as  thoughtless  and  careless  as  ^this  really  deserved  to  lose.  But  how 
that  man  ran — just  fluking!  And  Laddy  doubled  up  with  silent  laughter  at 
the  recollection.  And,  meanwhile,  across  all  these  reflections  and  this  laugh- 
ing, an  awful  shadow  was  stalking,  for  Laddy ,  still  looking  around,  was  slowly 
coming  to  a  realizing  sense  of  the  fact  that  there  was  no  bicycle  anywhere 
leaning  up  against  the  wall  for  him! 

No ;  no  bicycle.     After  all  that  he  had  hinted  and  spoken  outright,  and 


338  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

even  begged — no  bicycle.  And  then  he  grew  hot  all  over,  and  very  angry. 
He  had  never  known  what  it  was  before  to  be  very  angry,  it  seemed  He 
could  not  have  told  you  whether  it  was  a  minute  or  an  hour  he  stood  there 
and  ground  his  teeth,  but  when  he  saw  more  clearly,  his  mental  articulation 
was  repeating  the  last  words  he  had  distinctly  thought,  without  acknowledg- 
ing the  reason  of  his  anger  even  in  his  inner  consciousness.  Certainly  people 
as  careless  as  this  deserved  to  lose.  What  if  anybody — and  then  an  idea 
struck  Laddy — what  if  anybody  gave  this  family  a  scare,  and  made  them 
think  they  had  lost  their  Christmasing  I  For  his  part  he  had  lost  all  the 
Christmasing  he  cared  for. 

With  Laddy  a  thing  was  no  sooner  said  than  done.  There  was  still  five  or 
ten  minutes  of  good  light  from  the  moon.  He  remembered  that  one  of  the 
old-fashioned  white  dado  panels  in  the  side  of  the  chimney. place  was  a  closet 
opening  with  a  sunken  ring,  where  a  hearth-brush  and  kindlings  were  once 
kept,  although  disused  now.  He  went  and  pulled  at  the  ring.  It  was  so 
long  since  it  had  been  opened  that  it  stuck.  He  took  the  new  silver  paper- 
knife  that  was  to  be  papa's  to  morrow,  but  which,  in  Laddy 's  mind,  was 
nobody's  just  yet,  and  ran  it  along  the  cracks  and  pulled  again.  It  opened 
with  such  force  as  to  throw  him  on  his  back,  although,  owing  to  the  spring 
in  its  hinge,  it  immediately  shut  again.  But  it  had  disclosed  the  most  charm- 
ing hiding-place  in  the  world — all  one  side  of  it  shelves  made  by  the  receding 
brick-work  of  the  chimney-pier.  Laddy  did  not  lose  a  moment  in  hesitation, 
but  setting  it  open  again,  he  was  scarcely  longer  than  it  takes  to  tell  of  it  in 
transferring  to  this  receptacle  every  article  from  the  two  tables,  and  every 
stocking  from  the  mantel,  woefully  disturbed  the  while  lest  the  clinking  of  sil- 
ver and  gold  and  glass  and  china  should  betray  him. 

At  last  it  was  done,  although  not  quite  to  his  satisfaction.  He  was  afraid 
lest  a  scrap  of  lace,  a  thread  of  Kensington  work,  should  protrude  and  tell  the 
secret;  the  last  ray  of  the  moon  had  gone,  and  in  the  gloom  he  had  to  fee? 
rather  than  see.  He  got  farther  into  the  closet  than  he  knew,  in  arranging 
matters,  and  then  his  movement  happening  to  push  away  the  little  prop  that 
had  kept  the  door  open,  it  swung  together,  and  shut  him  in  with  all  the 
hidden  gear  and  the  dark. 

For  a  moment  Laddy  felt  as  if  there  was  no  heart  in  his  body.  He  groped 
about,  hardly  daring  to  move  lest  he  should  break  something,  and  fumbled 
all  over  the  place.  There  was  no  handle  on  the  inside  of  that  door,  as  the 
case  is  with  most  closets,  and  there  it  was  plain  he  must  stay  till  he  was  let 
out — unless  he  hallooed. 

Should  he  halloo?  What  a  time  it  would  make  if  he  did!  Father  and 
mother  and  the  big  boys  and  the  little  girls  would  all  come  rushing  down — it 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS  339 

would  take  more  than  his  hallooing  to  get  the  big  girls  out  of  bed — and 
maybe  great.grandmother  would  have  a  fit — and  then,  besides,  everybody 
would  be  sick  and  cross  to-morrow.  No,  he  would  wait  a  little  while  and  see 
what  would  happen.  Perhaps  Johnny  or  Tom  would  be  the  first  to  come  in 
in  the  morning,  and  could  let  him  out,  and  they  would  enjoy  the  joke  together 
and  creep  back  to  bed. 

So  thinking,  Laddy  laid  his  hands  on  the  driving-blanket  for  his  father, 
and  wrapped  it  round  himself,  for  it  was  none  too  warm  In  that  closet  which, 
besides  its  other  uses,  had  been  part  of  an  old  cellar  ventilating-flue.  A  fresh 
sense  of  injury  in  relation  to  the  bicycle  overcame  him,  as  he  folded  the 
blanket — his  father's  pleasure  was  provided  for.  And  then  he  chuckled  to 
think  how  mad  the  folks  would  be  in  the  morning'.  But  it  would  do  them 
good.  They  wouldn't  leave  diamonds  and  pearls,  and  bonds  and  sealskins 
and  purses  of  money  round  in  that  manner  again,  with  burglars  prowling 
about  the  house!  He  rolled  up  his  eyes  in  a  little  sanctimonious  virtue, 
thinking  of  the  lesson  he  was  giving  his  elders,  and  saw  something  overhead 
shining  brighter  than  Sophia's  diamonds — a  star,  like  an  immense  jewel  on 
the  deep  dark-blue  velvet  of  the  bit  of  sky  above  him,  and  then  he  realized 
that  the  place,  running  up  in  a  hollow  shaft  beside  the  chimney  to  its  top, 
was  open  to  all  the  winter  night,  let  the  opening  be  ever  so  narrow,  and  he 
grew,  perhaps,  sixty  degrees  colder  in  a  second.  Goodness,  how  cold  he  was-. 
His  teeth  began  to  chatter,  he  felt  his  throat  tickling,  his  head  stuffing,  his 
back  aching,  and  he  was  confident  he  would  have  a  lung  fever  before  day- 
break. He  put  his  bare  feet  against  the  chimney  bricks;  to  be  sure  there 
was  some  warmth  in  those — but  what  was  that  in  a  place  open  to  all  out- 
doors? For  some  of  the  top  bricks  had  fallen,  weathering  to  storms  of  half  a 
century,  and  made  the  hole  larger  than  that  crack  through  which  the  draught 
originally  whistled.  And  what  if  it  should  begin  to  rain  or  snow!  Laddy, 
in  his  mind's  eye,  was  already  buried  in  a  snow-drift,  and  he  began  to  think 
that  he  had  better  make  a  noise  about  it.  He  was,  perhaps,  to  be  suffocated 
there  in  a  drift  that  no  St.  Bernard  dogs  would  ever  find,  nobody  would  ever 
know  anything  about  it,  and  his  mother  would  miss  him  in  the  morning— he 
was  just  on  the  edge  of  tears  and  cries. 

But  before  the  tears  could  gather  and  fall,  a  new  thought  flashed  over 
Laddy. 

What  had  he  done  ?  He  had  taken  all  those  objects  of  value  and  made 
away  with  them.  That  was  what  he  had  done,  and  what  anybody  would  say 
he  had  done.  What  difference,  to  all  appearance,  would  there  seem  to  be  be- 
tween him  and  that  other  house-breaker?  What  if  they  should  hold  mm  to  be 
a  thief?  The  awful  thought  made  his  pulse  stop,  and  his  feet  turn  icy  cold. 


340  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

The  very  hair  on  his  head  began  slowly  to  rise  as  he  pictured  the  scene  to 
himself,  when  his  father  should  take  him  by  the  shoulder  and  wheel  him 
about  to  look  in  his  face;  when  the  constable  should  spring  the  handcuffs 
round  his  wrists,  and  march  him  down  to  the  police  court  with  a  crowd  of 
hooting  boys  following — and  there  the  terrible  old  judge  would  be  sitting  in 
his  chair!  Laddy  knew  just  how  that  court-room  looked ;  for  once,  when  the 
boys  had  been  nutting  in  old  Jacques's  pasture,  old  Jacques  had  surprised 
them,  and  driven  them  all  into  town  in  front  of  him  like  a  flock  of  sheep,  and 
walked  them  up  into  the  court-room,  seated  them  on  a  bench,  and  left  them 
there,  cooling  their  heels,  as  he  had  called  it,  and  gradually  finding  out, 
through  their  sobs,  and  gulps,  and  lamentations,  that  that  was  the  end  of  it. 
But  remembering  his  sensations  of  shame  and  horror  then,  Laddy  had  never 
been  able  to  think  of  the  place  since  without  a  shudder.  And  now  if  he  were 
to  be  taken  there  in  earnest — for  here  he  was,  with  all  his  plunder  about  him, 
and  of  course  his  father,  never  dreaming  that  his<own  boy  was  the  culprit, 
would  be  having  the  constables  in  to  survey  the  scene  and  discover  the  thief's 
tracks.  And,  thereupon,  Laddy  resolved  never  to  halloo,  in  fact  to  die  in 
those  tracks  first! 

As  he  lay  there  he  saw  the  slow  star  overhead  swim  out  of  sight ;  a  little 
thin  cloud  blew  over  the  darkness ;  one  by  one,  other  stars  came  and  looked 
down  at  him  with  their  beautiful  eyes;  perhaps  this  last  one  was  a  comet 
speeding  on  her  flight,  with  all  her  shining  films  around  her — if  it  was,  Laddy 
was  the  only  person  who  ever  saw  it,  and  he  did  not  see  it  long;  for  in  the 
midst  of  his  doubt,  and  fear,  and  misery,  haunted  by  flashes  of  stars,  and 
flashes  of  Sophia's  diamonds,  and  flashes  of  the  constable's  brass  buttons,  he 
fell  asleep. 

How  long  he  slept  Laddy  had  no  more  means  of  knowing  than  if  he  had 
been  a  little  stowaway  in  a  ship's  hold.  But  all  at  once  he  woke,  woke  to 
find  himself  overwhelmed  with  a  feeling  of  unutterable  horror,  he  knew  not 
why.  But  as  soon  as  hie  could  collect  himself  and  distinguish  one  sensation 
from  another  he  was  aware  of  a  strange  swift  crackling  sound,  like  the  noise 
made  by  burning  pine  kindling-wood.  With  that,  too,  came  a  stifling  choking 
smell,  a  smell  of  smoke,  and  a  red  glare  through  the  mantel  chinks.  Ah,  great 
heavens!  the  house  was  on  fire,  he  thought,  and  he  could  not  get  out,  and 
nobody  knew  he  was  in,  and  he  would  be  roasted  alive,  he  would  be  burned 
to  death!  "Let  me  out,  let  me  out!"  roared  Laddy.  "Fire!  fire!  fire!"  and 
the  sound  sank  in  his  throat,  and  he  fainted  dead  away. 

When  Laddy  came  to  himself  he  was  lying  on  the  bed  in  his  own  room, 
and  the  commotion  was  all  over.  For  a  commotion  there  had  been,  and  a 
wild  one.  .The  screams,  the  kicks,  the  smothered  cries  of  "fire!"  and 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  341 

Michael's  single  yell  of  terror,  had  brought  almost  the  whole  of  the  house- 
hold down  in  wrappers  and  shawls,  and  anything  handy,  to  behold  the  stripped 
mantel-shelf  and  the  bare  tables,  and  old  Michael,  who  had  kindled  the  blaze 
on  the  sitting-room  hearth,  as  usual  every  morning  before  putting  on  his 
back-log,  ignorant  that  everything  was  not  as  it  ought  to  be  there,  standing 
and  holding  up  both  hands,  his  eyes  and  mouth  wide  open,  and  himself  now 
voiceless  with  fear  and  amazement. 

The  others  were  not  voiceless,  however.  A  clamor  that  might  have 
waked  the  faint-away  rose  from  nearly  a  dozen  throats ;  cries  that  a  burglar 
had  been  there,  that  the  house  had  been  robbed,  that  all  their  presents  were 
gone,  that  the  police  must  be  sent  for,  and  suddenly,  added  to  all  the  rest, 
cries  from  the  mother,  who  lived  in  a  wild  fear  that  her  children  would  be 
kidnapped,  and  then  a  swift  calling  of  their  names,  and  nobody  answering  to 
Laddy's!  By  that  .time,  the  father  had  arrived  upon  the  scene,  and  looked 
about  him,  and  partially  begun  to  comprehend  it.  Perhaps  his  comprehen- 
sion was  assisted  by  the  sight  of  Laddy's  reels,  and  bobbins,  and  brackets  in 
a  little  heap  together  where  Laddy  had  left  them,  meaning  to  put  them  in 
last  of  all,  perhaps  by  a  tolerably  thorough  acquaintance  with  Laddy's  pecu- 
liarities. 

"There  is  no  burglar  in  the  business,"  he  said  calmly,  "and  there  is  no 
need  of  so  much  noise.  This  is  some  of  Master  Lawrence's  work."  In  spite 
of  the  wonder  and  alarm  of  the  moment  then,  Tom  and  Johnny  could  not 
hinder  a  thrill  of  pride  and  envy  that  shot  through  them — Laddy  to  be  the 
cause  of  all  this  rout!  "Now,  Michael,"  said  his  master,  "what  is  the  matter 
with  you?" 

"Begorra,  sor, "  said  the  man,  trying  to  hold  his  shaking  chin  on  his  face, 
"sure  it's  the  ould  boy,  an'  no  other,  do  be  in  the  chimney  closet  yander!" 

"Humph!"  said  his  master.  "The  old  boy!  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  it 
was  the  young  one." 

And  then  a  broad  grin  spread  over  Michael's  countenance.  "The  spal- 
peen himself!"  he  cried.  And  he  seized  the  sunken  ring  and  wrenched  open 
the  door,  and  there  lay  the  littls  wretch  in  his  dead  swoon  among  all  those 
gay  and  precious  objects. 

In  spite  of  their  consternation  and  indignation  and  marveling,  one  and 
all  they  could  not  but  commiserate  the  little  fellow  there.  Indeed,  Katharine 
and  Rosy,  unable  to  understand  it  now,  were  loud  in  their  exclamations  con- 
cerning the  house-breakers  who  could  be  so  cruel  as  to  take  their  Laddy  and 
shut  him  in  there,  while  his  father  lifted  him  in  his  arms  and  carried  him 

away. 

And  so,  as  I  was  saying,  when  he  came  to  himself  Laddy  was  lying  on 


342-  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

the  bed  in  his  own  room,  and  his  mother  was  on  one  side  of  him  with  cologne, 
her  long  black  hair  streaming  around  her,  and  his  Aunt  Mat  on  the  other  side 
with  camphor,  her  nightcap  all  askew  on  her  head,  and  grandmother  was  run- 
ning with  hot  flannels;  and  Johnny  hung  over  the  footboard,  as  if  he  wanted 
to  break  his  neck ;  and  Lucy  and  Sacie  and  Katharine  and  Rosy  were  huddled 
in  a  frightened  group  in  the  window-seat.  Opening  his  eyes  slowly,  and 
glancing  from  one  to  another,  it  gradually  stole  over  him,  as  life  stole  back  to 
him,  that  the  house  had  not  been  on  fire  at  all,  and  he  had  made  a  great  fool 
of  himself.  He  was  sick,  dizzy,  faint;  no  drum-sticks,  or  mince  pies,  or 
raisins,  or  cranberry  sauce,  or  plum  pudding  for  him  to-day !  He  knew  just 
what  they  would  do — they  would  keep  him  on  gruel,  perhaps  they  would  give 
him  castor  oil,  and  when  he  got  well  they  would  scold  him.  "Pretty  sort  of 
Christmas  for  a  fellow!"  wailed  Laddy. 

"Oh,  he's  alive!  he's  alive!"  cried  his  mother  clasping  her  hands  in 
thankfulness. 

"He's  breathing!"  cried  Aunt  Mat. 

"I'm  talking!"  cried  Laddy. 

And  then,  for  a  minute,  the  room  seemed  to  turn  upside  down,  whether 
because  Johnny  turned  a  somersault,  or  because  Tom  came  riding  in  on  a 
great  silent  bicycle  that  looked  to  Laddy's  eyes,  as  he  lay  there  on  the  bed, 
like  one  of  the  wheels  in  Ezekiel  that  grandmother  read  about  to  them  on  Sun- 
days, sometimes. 

"I  don't  think  you  deserve  it,"  said  his  father,  a  little  severely,  following 
Tom  in  again,  while  Sophia  shook  her  head  at  him  in  the  doorway,  with  the 
diamonds  sparkling  in  her  ears.  "But  I  bought  it  for  you — and  you  have 
been  already  well  punished — and  so — as  long  as  it's  Christmas"— 

"Is  it  mine?"  interrupted  Laddy. 

"Yours,"  but  I  want  you  to  understand  that  he  would  not  have  had  it  if 
he  had  been  my  boy.  "Yours,"  said  his  father. 

"As  long  as  it's  Christmas,"  repeated  Tom,  grandly,  from  his  lofty 
perch. 

"Then,  Tom,"  cried  Laddy,  standing  up  in  bed,  "I'll  stump  you  to  ride 
down  stairs  on  it!" 

"I  guess  he'll  live,"  said  his  father. 

"And  we  will  have  a  pretty  sort  of  Christmas,  after  all,"  said  Laddy. 
"For  there  really  was  a  burglar,  and  I  really  put  him  to  flight.  And  it  was 
mighty  careless  in  you— and  now  I'll  tell  you  all  about  it'" 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  343 


CHAPTER  THIRTEENTH. 


Angels  Unawares. 

A  happy  youth,  and  their  old  age 
Is  beautiful  and  free. 

—  Wordsworth. 

Therefore  my  age  is  as  a  lusty  winter, 
Frosty  but  kindly. 

— Shakespeare. 

Youth  is  a  blunder;  manhood  a  struggle;  old  age  a  regret. 

—  Disraeli. 

His  helmet  now  shall  make  a  hive  for  bees, 
And  lover's  songs  be  turned  to  holy  psalms; 
A  man-at-arms  must  now  serve  on  his  knees, 
And  feed  on  prayers  which  are  old  age's  alms. 

— Gt^rge  Peele. 

A  lovely  lady,  garmented  in  light 
From  her  own  beauty. 

—Shelley. 

She  is  the  lady  who  breaks  bread 

To  those  who  suffer  for  the  want  of  it. 

— Anon. 

Those  graceful  acts, 

Those  thousand  decencies  that  daily  flow 
From  all  her  words  and  actions. 

— Milton. 

And  when  a  lady's  in  the  case 

You  know  all  other  things  give  place. 

— Gay. 

I  am  very  fond  of  the  company  of  ladies.     I  like  their  beauty,  I  like  their  delicacy,  I  like 
their  vivacity,  and  I  like  their  silence. — Dr.  Johnson. 

No  house  or  home  is  quite  complete  when  everything  has  been  done  with- 
out that  presence  in  it  which  redeems  the  too  sordid  pursuit  of  present  oppor- 
tunities by  the  tender  touch  of  the  things  of  the  past.  "  What  is  home  with- 
out a  mother  ? "  the  street  ballad  has  it,  but  just  as  true  and  forcible  a  phrase 
would  be,  "What  is  home  without  a  grandmother  J" 


344  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

Whether  it  is  the  brisk  and  bustling  grandmother  whose  years  set  lightly, 
and  who  is  more  useful  than  any  brownie  in  the  house,  or  the  dear  old  saint 
whose  work  is  done  and  who  can  only  sit  with  folded  hands  and  show  us  how 
near  heaven  is  to  earth,  it  is  the  grandmother  that  is  the  real  angel  in  the 
house,  and  every  child  of  the  family  thinks  so. 

What  one  boy  thought  of  his  grandmother  is  quite  apparent  in  these  lines  : 


What  a  Boy  Thought  of  His  Grandmother. 

A  stitch  is  always  dropping  in  the  everlasting  knitting, 

And  the  needles  that  I've  threaded,  no,  you  couldn't  count  to-day; 

And  I've  hunted  for  the  glasses  till  I  thought  my  head  was  splitting, 
When  there  upon  her  forehead  as  calm  as  clocks  they  lay. 

I've  read  to  her  till  I  was  hoarse,  the  Psalms  and  the  Epistles, 
When  the  other  boys  were  burning  tar-barrels  down  the  street ; 

And  I've  stayed  and  learned  my  verses  when  I  heard  their  willow  whistles, 
And  I've  stayed  and  said  my  chapter  with    fire  in  both  my  feet. 

And  I've  had  to  walk  beside  her  when  she  went  to  evening  meeting, 

When  I  wanted  to  be  racing,  to  be  kicking,  to  be  off; 
And  I've  waited  while  she  gave  the  folks  a  word  or  two  of  greeting 

First  on  one  foot  and  the  other  and  most  strangled  with  a  cough. 

"You  can  talk  of  Young  America,"  I  say,  "till  you  are  scarlet, 

It's  Old  America,  I  say,  that  has  the  inside  track!" 
Then  she  raps  me  with  her  thimble  and  calls  me  a  young  varlet, 

And  then  she  looks  so  woe-begone  I  have  to  take  it  back. 

But !  There  always  is  a  peppermint  or  a  penny  in  her  pocket— r 
There  never  was  a  pocket  that  was  half  so  big  and  deep — 

And  she.  lets  the  candle  in  my  room  burn  way  down  to  the  socket, 
While  she  tews  and  putters  round  about  till  I  am  sound  asleep. 

There's  always  somebody  at  home  when  every  one  is  scattering; 

She  spreads  the  jam  upon  your  bread  in  a  way  to  make  you  grow; 
She  always  takes  a  fellow's  side  when  every  one  is  battering; 

And  when  I  tear  my  jacket  I  know  just  where  to  go! 

And  when  I've  been  in  swimming  after  father  said  I  shouldn't, 

And  mother  has  her  slipper  off,  according  to  the  rule, 
It  sounds  as  sweet  as  silver,  the  voice  that  says,  "I  wouldn't — 

The  boy  that  won't  go  swimming  such  a  day  would  be  a  fool !" 

Sometimes  there's  something  in  her  voice  as  if  she  gave  a  blessing. 
And  I  look  at  her  a  moment  and  I  keep  still  as  a  mouse — 

And  who  she  is  by  this  time  there  is  no  need  of  guessing, 
For  there's  nothing  like  a  grandmother  to  have  about  the  house. 


THE  SWEET  SERENITY  OF  SILVER-HAIRED  AGE. 


(345) 


346  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

It  becomes  us  to  keep  the  old  in  reverence.  While  they  are  with  us  they 
seem  to  be  a  barrier  against  the  dark  unknown.  The  day  they  go  it  is  we  that 
take  their  places,  and  become  in  our  turn  the  barrier  for  those  younger  than 
we. 

Old  Age. 

If  we  live  there  is  one  thing  before  us  all,  and  that  is  old  age.  And  yet  it 
is  strange  that  what  is  so  universal  and  so  inevitable  should  be  so  dreaded,  and 
that  none  of  us  desire  it  in  the  least  degree,  when  we  so  frequently  find  it  lovely 
in  others.  Perhaps  it  is  the  doubt,  the  uncertainty,  that  it  will  be  found  as 
lovely  in  us  that  makes  us  postpone  it  while  we  may,  for  "  we  know  what  we 
are,  but  we  know  not  what  we  shall  be."  Perhaps  it  is  the  eager  grasp  which 
we  are  giving  to  the  things  of  this  world  that  makes  us  loath  to  drop  them, 
makes  us  feel  it  impossible  to  stand  contentedly  empty-handed,  our  eyes  dim 
to  this  world's  brightness,  and  only  the  light  of  the  city  on  the  other  side  of  the 
dark  water  shining  in  our  faces.  But  on  how  many  of  the  sweet  old  faces  we 
see  that  calm,  white  light,  till  we  might  almost  fancy  that  their  angels  are 
holding  before  them  the  refulgent  crown  of  their  good  lives,  and  that  they  stand 
under  the  shelter  of  heavenly  wings  ! 

But  near  as  the  old  must  be  to  the  other  shores,  there  is  too  much  of  the 
awful  and  unknown  in  the  thought  for  familiar  use,  and  it  is  in  relation  to  this 
life,  this  stir  and  strife,  that  we  are  the  most  apt  to  look  at  them,  and  thus  there 
is  to  us  much  that  is  ineffably  touching  about  an  old  man  or  an  old  woman  who 
has  laid  down  the  weapons  of  the  warfare,  who  sees  all  for  which  the  struggle 
was  made  slowly  slipping  away,  and  who  now  is  only  waiting.  Something  of 
the  innocence  and  holiness  of  babyhood  gathers  about  these  old  people;  we  feel 
for  them  a  portion  of  the  same  tenderness  that  we  do  for  those  who  are  just 
"beginning  life,  while  at  the  same  time  we  recognize  in  them  already  the  outline 
of  the  sacred  thing  they  are  presently  to  become.  They  are  so  helpless  that 
all  our  helpfulness  springs  forth  to  support  them,  and  are  being  made  so  desti- 
tute of  those  things  for  which  we  care  the  most  that  all  our  pity  is  theirs,  too. 

It  is  not  with  any  selfish  comprehension  that  as  they  are  we,  too,  shall  be, 
in  the  words  of  the  old  epitaph,  that  we  feel  thus  toward  them,  but  through  the 
inherent  graciousness  and  beauty  that  old  age  possesses.  "  There  is  one  glory 
of  the  sun  and  another  glory  of  the  moon,"  the  apostle  says,  and  the  velvet 
skin,  the  smiles  and  dimples  of  youth,  do  not  monopolize  beauty  so  long  as  the 
sweet  serenity  of  silver-haired  age  exists. 

It  may  be  that  we  look  upon  the  old  with  such  a  tender  and  admiring  regard 
chiefly  because  of  this  serenity — the  serenity  of  abnegation  or  of  conquest; 


THAT  TENDERNESS  FELT  FOR  THE  OLD. 


(347) 


348  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

we  know  they  have  gone  through  the  trial  from  which  we  shrink,  and  that  they 
have  come  out  victorious  and  at  rest ;  we  wonder  at  them,  and  think  of  them  in 
some  measure  as  of  a  superior  order  of  beings.  They  have  surrendered  the 
bloom  of  youth,  and  all  its  fresh  strength  and  vigor — the  bounding  heart,  the 
dancing  step,  the  sparkling  eye,  the  quick  senses.  They  have  laid  their  dear 
ones  in  the  dust;  they  will  soon  be  dust  themselves;  they  know  it,  and  yet  they 
smile  upon  us  and  go  on  without  shrinking.  We  might  suppose,  possibly,  that 
a  portion  of  this  serenity  was  due  to  duller  perceptions,  if  we  did  not  sometimes 
see  it  accompanied  by  power  of  as  vivid  emotion  as  was  ever  shown  by  youth, 
by  as  strong  love,  as  eager  kindness,  till  we  are  forced  to  recognize  it  as  an 
aura  and  emanation  of  age  itself. 


Growing  Old  Gracefully. 

Still,  for  all  the  interest  that  attaches  to  age,  most  of  us  find  it  difficult  to 
grow  old  gracefully.  The  first  few  whitening  threads  in  our  hair  amuse  us  as 
a  prank  of  nature.  Other  people  may  grow  gray,  but  in  ourselves  we  feel  the 
bubbling  of  a  fountain  of  inexhaustible  youth.  We  hardly  think  of  those  white 
threads  as  a  serious  fact,  never  as  spies  who  have  stolen  in  to  possess  the  land. 
But  we  have  read  of  certain  weeds  foreign  to  a  soil  that  one  year  appear  here 
and  there  thinly,  a  struggling  outpost,  and  another  year  the  whole  grand  army 
has  advanced, the  possessor  is  dispossessed,  and  the  weed  reigns.  And  one  day 
we  are  suddenly  startled  to  see  that  ashes  have  fallen  on  our  head,  that  ours  is 
the  common  lot,  that  age — dark  and  unlovely  it  seems  then  to  us,  as  it  did  to 
Ossian — has  in  reality  begun.  And  at  the  same  time,  very  like,  we  see  the 
wrinkles  round  the  eye,  coming  so  stealthily  that  we  had  never  suspected  them 
till  we  were  used  to  them;  the  deepening  lines  of  the  forehead;  we  see  that  the 
lustre  and  the  smoothness  and  the  roundness  of  youth  are  gone.  Ashes  are  on 
our  head  indeed,  and  we  are  inclined  to  put  on  sack -cloth,  too;  for  while  we 
are  still  conscious  of  the  buoyancy  and  hopefulness  of  youth,  we  find  that  we 
have  lost  its  charm,  and  we  cannot  so  resign  it  without  a  struggle;  angry  with 
our  impotence,  we  declare  ourselves  old,  wear  old  colors,  adopt  old  ways,  in  a 
sort  of  satire  upon  ourselves,  till,  before  we  know  it,  that  buoyancy  has  gone, 
too  ;  elasticity  has  followed  ;  in  the  relaxing  of  our  muscles  we  observe  the 
sinking  of  the  eye,  the  sagging  of  the  cheek,  and  if  there  is  a  sud- 
den revulsion  of  our  methods  we  do  not-  strive  to  disguise  it  ;  we 
strive  to  ignore  it,  and  are  resolved  to  be  young  in  spite  of  years  and  fate.  We 
scrutinize  those,  then,  who  have  already  suffered  this  crisis,  if,  indeed,  they 
cared  as  we  have  cared,  with  an  ignorant  marveling;  their  peacefulness  seems 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


349 


stolidity,  their  cheer- 
fulness seems  but 
submission  to  the 
inevitable;  and  per- 
haps out  of  the  dark 
a  great  helping  hand 
reaches  forth  to  give 
us  strength,  to  lead 
us  forward  till  we 
can  gild  the  future 
with  faith,  and  there 
has  begun  to  mingle 
with  our  wonder  a 
sympathy  that,  if  it 
strips  away  some  of 
the  mystery  from 
hoary  eld,  gives  it  a 
more  human  inter- 
est than  we  have 
hitherto  allotted  it; 
and  we  understand 
bow  the  widowed 
grandmother  re- 
lieves her  gay  days 
in  the  gayeties  of 
her  grandchildren, 
understand  how  she 
beguiles  herself 
with  knitting  and 
netting  and  all  the 
little  domestic  de- 
tails of  the  house, 
and  we  find  some- 
thing more  pitiable  than  we  found  before  in  the  loneliness  of  the  old  grand- 
father, whose  eyes  have  failed  and  whose  mate  has  gone  before. 


GAYETIES  OF  HER  GRANDCHILDREN. 


The    Satisfactions  of  Age. 

But  age  must  have  some  satisfactions  of   its  own,  independent  of  our 
care,  or  love,  or  pity,  that  are  a  compensation.     There  is  hardly  anything,  for 


350  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

example,  of  the  uncertain  before  it.  All  has  been  gained  or  lost — and  what  has 
been  enjoyed  is  never  lost.  Sitting  in  the  shadow  with  its  thoughts,  muffled 
from  the  outer  world  by  torpid  and  weakening  nerves,  what  bright  and  joyous 
phantasmagoria  may  move  before  it  ! — the  laughing  hours  of  a  long-gone 
childhood ;  the  tremors,  the  assurances,  the  transports  of  riper  years,  when  all 
the  world  seemed  made  only  to  bring  such  happiness  about;  the  successes  of 
later  life  !  What  merry  memories  and  what  tender  ones  blend  together !  How 
the  forgotten  starts  to  life  like  the  sparks  that  run  along  a  dying  fire !  And 
how,  with  one  foot  on  heaven's  threshold,  it  lingers  to  look  back  and  get  the 
last  drop  of  the  honey  here  ! 

And  yet,  full  of  fascination  as  the  study  of  old  age  might  be,  both  intrinsic- 
ally and  from  constantly  approximating  interest,  there  are  few  who  have  been 
attracted  to  make  use  of  it  ;  philosophy  has  not  concerned  itself  with  it,  physi- 
ology has  insulted  it,  sculpture  and  painting  have  slighted  it,  and  poetry  has 
shuddered  away  from  it.  To  this  day  Tithonus  stands  as  a  model  of  misery  ; 
and  one  poet  only  has,  to  my  mind,  touched  the  matter  deeply,  for  the  old 
gypsy  who  magnetized  Browning's  duchess  to  her  flight  alone  seems  to  appre- 
ciate the  whole  meaning  and  purpose  of  this  crown  and  sum  cf  existence. 

"  So  at  the  last  shall  come  old  age, 

Decrepit,  as  befits  that  stage ; 

How  else  wouldst  thou  retire  apart 

With  the  hoarded  memories  of  thy  heart, 

And  gather  all,  to  the  very  least, 

Of  the  fragments  of  life's  earlier  feast, 

Let  fall  through  eagerness,  to  find 

The  crowning  dainties  yet  behind? 

Ponder  on  the  entire  past, 

Laid  together  thus  at  last, 

When  the  twilight  helps  to  fuse 

The  first  fresh,  with  the  faded  hues, 

And  the  outline  of  the  whole — 

As  round  eve's  shades  their  frame-work  roll — 

Grandly  fronts  for  once  thy  soul!" 


The  Refinement  of  Old  Age. 

In  some  manner  not  easily  or  entirely  comprehensible  the  aged  have 
almost  always,  or  seem  to  have,  a  singular  refinement  of  manner  and  feeling. 
The  grandmother,  no  matter  in  what  condition  of  life,  is  felt  by  those  that 
come  in  contact  with  her  to  have  that  quality  about  her  which  is  possessed  by 
those  to  whom  we  apply  the  term  of  lady.  It  is  not  because  she  sits  still  with 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  351 

little  to  do,  if  that  so  happens,  but  because  love,  suffering,  sacrifice,  and  per- 
haps the  near  presence  of  death,  have  so  refined  her  and  given  her  those  quali- 
ties of  ladyhood  which  are  a  happiness  to  all  about  her  and  a  boon  in  any- 
family.  For  refinement  is  a  contagious  thing,  and  one  lady  in  a  family  is  apt 
to  make  another  there  in  the  course  of  time.  Few  terms,  by  the  way,  are  so 
misapplied  as  this  pleasure -giving  title  of  "a  lady."  "Me  last  mistress  was  a 
leddy,"  says  scornful  Nora ;  "  she  niver  putt  the  nose  of  her  intil  the  kitchen 
door."  With  Nora,  then,  the  element  of  ladyhood  was  the  accordance  of  lib- 
erty to  run  the  wheels  of  the  kitchen  without  interference.  "  Mrs.  Fitzgerald 
is  a  raal  leddy,"  cries  Bridget,  "  she  niver  asks  me  to  set  me  hand  to  a  dish  oa 
the  ironing  day."  With  Bridget,  then,  the  element  of  ladyhood  is  considera- 
tion for  the  worker.  And  Teddy  will  speak  to  you  of  "the  lady  that  do  be 
doin'  yer  washin',"  whether  through  fear  of  hurting  the  feeling  of  the  laun- 
dress, or  from  a  desire  to  assert  an  equality  which  you  can  not  stoop  to  dispute 
but  which,  not  being  disputed,  he  may  feel  is  in  a  way  tacitly  established. 

Of  course  our  democratic  system  and  principles  of  government  are  respon- 
sible for  much  of  this.  Every  woman  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific 
seas  has  the  opportunity  of  becoming  a  lady,  this  technical  lady. 


The  Term    "Lady/' 

It  is  the  height  of  the  ambition  of  the  newly  arrived  peasant  ;  equal  in 
rights  before  the  law,  she  interprets  the  law  as  she  would  have  it,  and  asserts 
herself  equal  in  all  else,  the  moment  that  she  graduates  from  shopping  at  a 
dry-goods  store ;  and  it  being  in  everybody's  power  to  become  this  lady,  she 
considers  it  an  insult  to  take  it  for  granted  that  one  is  any  otherwise  than  all 
she  could  be. 

The  term  "lady  "  had  originally  a  signification  that  explains  something  of 
this  ambition  and  pretense.  It  can  claim  either  of  two  derivations;  the  one 
coming  from  the  verb  "  to  lift,"  meaning  that  a  wife  was  lifted  to  her  hus- 
band's rank,  and  in  so  far  as  she  was  made  mistress  of  his  house,  had  received 
a  desirable  elevation  from  her  "previous  condition  of  servitude."  The  other 
derivation  is  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  words  that  signify  the  daily  delivery  of  the 
loaf  to  servants,  guests,  and  beggars,  thus  implying  the  features  that  generally 
distinguish  the  idea  of  the  lady  to  the  present  day — supposed  dignity  of  mar- 
riage or  of  years,  the  wealth  that  makes  it  possible  to  dispense  the  loaf,  the 
gentle  civility  or  charity  that  does  dispense  it.  The  recognition  of  a  lady  from. 
the  day  in  which  this  custom  originated  has  been  as  the  mistress  of  a  manor,  of 
revenues  and  retainers,  one  who  followed  the  established  manner  of  the  feudal 


.352  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

•days  in  feeding  them  that  hungered.  The  recognition  of  a  lady  now  should 
only  be  changed  by  the  progression  of  events  and  ideas,  the  abandonment  of 
all  thought  of  the  necessity  of  manor  and  revenue,  and  maintaining  only  the 
necessity  of  possession  by  her  of  the  Christian  charities;  for  she  who  practices 
the  Christian  charities,  and  practices  them  with  reflection,  cannot  fail  to  be 
gentle  and  well  bred,  and  that  is  the  whole  of  a  lady.  Certain  small  conven- 
tionalisms of  place  or  fashion  are  of  no  account  in  the  scale;  to  conceal  vexa- 
tion, to  guard  the  unruly  member — "  for  the  tongue  is  a  fire  " — to  give  pleas- 
ure, to  regard  the  feelings  of  others — can  a  lady  do  more  ? 

One  may,  perchance,  demur  a  little  at  this  characterization,  yet  no  other  is 
at  all  practicable.  To  fix  education  and  accomplishment  and  wealth  as  the 
criterions  of  a  lady  would  scarcely  be  possible,  owing  to  the  very  various  de- 
grees of  these  qualities,  if  for  our  purpose  they  may  so  be  termed.  The  wife 
of  the  merchant  prince  who  is  taxed  for  a  hundred  millions  may  not  know  how 
to  make  a  drawing  of  her  teacup,  or  how  to  play  a  tune  on  the  piano-forte,  or 
how  to  tell  a  fine  poem,  a  fine  picture,  a  fine  sonata,  when  she  reads  it,  sees  it, 
hears  it.  She  may  be  an  upstart,  and  look  down  on  those  less  wealthy,  and 
rudely  show  her  poor  disdain.  It  is  possible  that  she  may  be  rough  and  coarse, 
of  low  taste  and  ill  disposition.  We  can  not  make  her  wealth  one  of  our  crite- 
rions. Or,  again,  it  is  credible  that  one  may  be  educated  in  books  to  the  last 
degree,  yet  know  nothing  of  good  manners;  may  wipe  her  pen  in  her  hair  and 
her  fingers  on  her  gown;  may  quarrel  with  her  tradesmen,  slap  her  servants' 
faces,  insult  her  neighbors,  brawl  at  her  gate,  and  indulge  in  such  peccadilloes 
as  an  inherited  kleptomania  or  a  spontaneous  dipsomania.  Her  education  can 
not  be  one  of  our  criterions.  The  woman  whose  painting  hangs  on  the 
Academy  wall  may  not  be  worth  a  farthing  in  money,  but  then,  in  addition,  she 
may  not  know  how  to  sing  a  stave  by  note,  and  may  be  totally  uneducated  in 
everything  but  her  special  art.  Her  aptitude  in  painting  can  not  be  one  of  our 
criterions  either.  The  woman  whose  accomplishment  in  music  is  extraordin- 
.ary,  who  can  delight  you  by  the  hour  with  her  rendition  of  the  choicest 
morceaux,  who,  if  she  appear  in  concert,  will  be  half  hidden  from  sight  with  the 
flowers  flung  for  her  taking,  and  whose  songs  yield  a  fortune  every  year,  may 
be  utterly  unlettered,  utterly  ill-bred,  unable  to  speak  her  mother-tongue  cor- 
rectly, almost  ignorant  of  existence  of  any  other  art  than  her  own,  a  vulgar 
glutton :  we  can  not  make  her  phenomenally  sweet  voice,  her  knowledge  of 
counterpoint,  her  accomplishment  in  music,  any  criterion  of  the  lady. 

Thus  we  see  that  as  neither  wealth  in  the  one  instance,  nor  education,  nor 
genius,  nor  the  natural  endowment  of  a  warbling  voice  cultivated  to  its  utmost, 
is  to  be  admitted  as  the  essential  of  a  lady,  something  else  must  be  wanted,  and 
that  something  can  only  be  the  thorough  high -breeding  which  is  measured  by 


CENTLE  AND  WELL  BRED,   AND  THAT  IS  THE  WHOLE  LADY.  (353) 


354  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

the  length  and  breadth  of  the  Golden  Rule.  To  be  a  lady  is  not  to  live  an  idle 
life  and  have  smooth  jeweled  hands;  for  the  word  lady  implies  some  stage  of 
civilization,  and  a  barbarian  may  lead  an  idle  life  and  have  jeweled  hands,  and 
nose,  too.  It  is  not  to  trail  silks  and  velvets  after  one ;  for  a  squaw  may  buy 
silks  and  velvets,  if  she  will,  with  her  husband's  peltry,  and  can  wear  the 
imperial  furs,  since  she  catches  the  creatures  of  the  precious  skin  herself.  It 
is  not  to  wear  silver  moons  on  one's  shoes,  as  certain  of  the  Romans  did  who 
wished  to  claim  a  preferred  gentility.  It  is  not  to  count  earls  and  princes  in 
one's  ancestry,  and  trace  the  family  tree  back  to  the  root  of  sturdy  and  heroic 
knights,  unless  their  blood  has  blossomed  into  noble  deeds  in  us,  for  otherwise 
we  are  their  reproach,  not  they  our  glory;  and  one  may  be  the  descendant  of  a 
king,  and  yet  sink,  as  descendants  of  kings  have  now  and  then  been  known  to 
do,  into  the  slums  and  waste  places  of  society. 

"Christ,  wol  we  claime  of  him  our  gentilesse, 
Not  of  our  elders  for  their  old  richesse : 
For  though  they  gave  us  all  their  heritage 
For  which  we  claime  to  be  of  high  parage, 
Yet  may  they  not  bequethen  for  no  thing 
To  none  of  us  their  virtuous  living 
That  made  the  gentilesse  called  to  be, 
And  bade  us  follow  them  in  such  degree. 
And  he  that  wol  have  prize  of  his  genterie 
— For  he  was  boren  of  a  gentil  house. 
And  had  his  elders  noble  and  virtuous, 
And  n'  ill  himselven  do  no  gentil  dedh 
Nefolne  his  gentil  auncestrie  that  dead  is 
He  n'  is  not  gentil,  be  he  duke  or  erl, 
For  vilains  sinful  dedes  make  a  churl. 
Then  cometh  our  very  gentilesse  of- grace, 
It  was  no  thing  bequethed  us  with  our  place," 

says  old  Chaucer,  And  though  he  speaks  especially  of  men,  a  lady  is  only  the 
complement  of  a  gentleman. 

To  be  a  lady,  then,  it  is  clear,  does  not  depend  on  any  of  these  factitious 
circumstances  with  which  we  have  nothing  to  do,  but  entirely  on  ourselves. 
The  woman  who  does  the  washing  may,  indeed,  be  as  much  of  a  lady  in  some 
respects  as  the  woman  who  employs  her,  if,  that  is,  she  carries  her  self-respect 
into  her  work,  and  is  that  gentle  thing  from  which  the  word  gentility  was  born 
— gentility,  which  belongs  only  to  those  who  strive  to  do  what  is  fit  and  be- 
coming; and  if  it  is  fit  and  becoming  in  her  to  do  washing,  it  then  being  fit  and 
becoming  to  do  it  well,  in  so  far  as  she  does  it  well,  in  so  far  she  is  a  lady.  Yet 
only  so  far.  Other  things  than  the  mere  routine  performance  of  a  coarse  duty 
are  requisite  in  this  grand  inventory ;  those  gentle  manners  which  offend  none ; 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  355 

that  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  others  which  pleases  all ;  that  absence  of 
anything  which  can  produce  a  sentiment  of  repulsion  or  of  disgust;  that  sub- 
mission to  the  fact  that  the  humblest  woman  in  the  street  is  a  soul  of  equal 
value  in  God's  eye. 

One,  in  short,  is  the  true  lady  in  whom  courtesy  and  tranquillity  and  trust 
are  rightly  mingled  with  discretion,  with  knowledge,  and  with  the  grace  of 

God. 

"Wrong  dares  not  in  her  presence  speak, 

Nor  spotted  thought  its  tamt  disclose 
Under  the  protest  of  a  cheek 

Outbragging  Nature  s  boast,  the  rose!" 

But  be  the  grandmother  as  much  a  lady  as  you  will — she  has  still — even  if 
she  has  the  possibilities  of  the  angel  in  her — a  good  deal  of  the  human  about 
her  also,  and  she  is  a  little  more  than  mortal  if  sometimes  she  does  not  try  to 
impress  upon  others  the  advantage  of  her  own  experience.  She  does  this  more 
especially  in  the  matter  of  attending  to  the  health  of  the  children,  who  are  her 
idols,  and  it  is  a  wise  mother  of  those  children  who  can  reach  the  golden  mean 
of  having  them  cared  for  as  they  should  be  and  at  the  same  time  of  not  dis- 
pleasing the  grandmother. 

Ailments  in  the  Family. 

The  grandmother  who,  having  brought  up  a  family  of  her  own,  thinks  her 
knowledge  well  proved  and  her  ways  the  right  ways,  and  at  every  ailment  of  the 
children  would  have  her  advice  followed,  often  without  regard  to  any  improve- 
ment that  may  have  taken  place  in  all  the  years  of  study,  research,  and  experi- 
ment since  her  day.  And  what  those  years  have  brought  to  light  is  something 
hardly  to  be  reckoned,  and  far  beyond  the  poor  old  grandmother's  knowledge, 
and  almost  beyond  the  appreciation  of  any  but  physicians  and  students  them- 
selves. As  it  is  now,  when  we  read  of  the  immense  discoveries  and  inven- 
tions in  the  practice  of  medicine,  the  discrimination  and  diagnosis  of  delicate 
differences  of  kindred  disease,  the  chemical  discoveries  and  consequent  applica- 
tion of  new  remedies,  the  superb  point  of  skill  that  surgery  has  reached,  the 
microscopical  examination  of  the  germs  of  various  diseases,  and  new  light 
thrown  on  their  possible  extirpation,  the  beneficence  of  anaesthetics,  we  sorrow 
over  the  stupidity  of  those  Dark  Ages  when  the  leech  and  the  barber  were  one, 
and  the  trick  of  blistering  and  blood-letting  and  the  administration  of  dried 
adders  and  pulverized  angle- worms  was  the  height  of  medical  knowledge — 
knowledge  that  often  called  in  witchcraft  and  divination  to  its  aid. 

Yet  it  is  but  a  little  while  ago  that  remedies  as  trifling  as  those  of  the  Dark 


356  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Ages  were  in  vogue  among  us,  and  questioned  only  by  those  daring  skeptics 
who  doubted  the  fact  that  epidemics,  traceable  to  and  explainable  by  our  own 
neglect  and  filthiness,  were  visitations  of  Providence.  It  is  but  the  other  day 
that  the  gouty  were  admonished  to  drink  every  day  for  a  twelvemonth,  a  weak 
tea  of  the  leaves  of  the  holy  thistle,  made  palatable  by  the  addition  of  those  of 
angelica — not  less  wise  than  the  ancient  Greek  belief  that  eating  ripe  blackber- 
ries prevented  people  from  becoming  gouty,  anyway;  and  at  the  same  time  it 
was  held  that  a  hysterical  girl  was  to  be  cured  by  spreading  her  matutinal 
bread  and  butter  with  caraway  seed,  ginger  and  salt.  These  ideas,  if  they  really 
reached  the  dignity  of  ideas,  were  hardly  to  be  called  improvements  upon  Hip- 
pocrates' notion  that  the  brain  was  a  large  gland  which  absorbed  the  spare 
moisture  of  the  body,  or  Galen's  that  the  soul  was  composed  of  three  parts,  the 
vegetative  in  the  liver,  the  rational  in  the  brain,  and  the  irascible  in  the  heart. % 

There  have  been  dogmas  in  all  ages  regarding  the  things  that  are  to  cure 
disease  as  instantly  as  the  disease  comes.  It  is  still  held  in  some  of  the  English 
rural  districts  that  a  ring  made  of  a  sacramental  shilling — that  is,  a  shilling 
given  in  the  alms  collected  at  Communion — will  at  once  cure  the  epilepsy  ;  and 
by  the  same  class  of  people  fried  mice  are  held  to  be  a  specific  for  smallpox, 
the  more  effective  specific,  too,  if  the  mice  are  fried  alive  ;  and  h  is  believed 
that  the  advice  of  anybody  riding  on  a  piebald  horse  will  cure  the  worst  case  of 
whooping  cough  to  be  had.  Mrs.  Delany,  in  1774,  gave  in  all  good  faith  the 
recipe  of  sealing  a  spider  into  a  goose-quill  and  hanging  it  round  a  child's  neck 
to  cure  the  ague  ;  and  Dr.  Graham  in  his  medical  work  prescribes  spiders' 
webs  rolled  into  pills  for  intermittent  fever.  Perhaps  some  of  our  travelers 
who  suffer  from  Roman  fever — although  in  this  country  the  same  thing  is  called 
only  the  democratic  "  chill " — might  try  this  spider's  pill  to  advantage.  Bishop 
Berkeley,  who  was  wise  enough  to  know  the  directior  taken  by  the  star  of 
empire,  was  weak  enough  to  see  in  tar-water  a  panacea  for  every  ill ;  and  for 
the  cure  of  Lord  Metcalfe,  who  died  of  cancer  so  late  as  1846,  a  plaster  and  a 
powder  were  prescribed  by  a  friend  and  well-wisher,  the  chief  ingredient  in 
wliich  was  a  portion  of  a  young  frog.  Yet  how  can  we  laugh  at  these  fancies 
or  dare  to  despise  them  when  we  condescend  to  carry  a  horse  chestnut  in  our 
pocket  to  ward  off  the  rheumatism  ?  People  who  have  listened  to  such  non- 
sense have  no  right  to  smile  even  at  the  Egyptian  who  regarded  the  eating  of 
a  citron  the  first  thing  in  the  morning  as  an  antidote  and  preventive  of  every 
sort  of  poison. 

The  truth  is  that  we  are  all  far  too  prone  to  dabble  in  physic  without  know- 
ing anything,  about  it,  and  had  much  rather  take  and  give  remedies  of  our  own 
or  the  next  person's  conceit  than  call  the  doctor,  whose  business  it  is  to  know  all 
about  it,  weakening  or  exciting  ourselves  usually  in  just  the  wrong  way  as  a 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  357 

result.  It  might  be  better  for  us  if  we  agreed  with  M.  Monthyon,  who,  being 
forbidden  wine  in  an  illness,  and  prescribed  large  doses  of  cold  water,  returned 
the  glass  after  one  sip  to  his  wife,  saying,  "  Take  it,  my  dear,  and  keep  it  for 
another  time  ;  I  have  always  heard  we  should  not  trifle  with  remedies."  The 
French  gentleman's  precept,  if  not  his  practice,  would  be  worth  our  attention. 

Until  our  education  in  pathology  is  better  attended  to,  it  is  playing  with 
fire  for  us  to  undertake  to  "doctor"  ourselves,  as  the  greater  number  of  us  are 
fond  of  doing  in  our  little  ailments,  and  really  rather  as  if  we  were  glad  of  the 
opportunity,  especially  so  long  as  there  is  a  class  in  the  community  educated 
for  nothing  ehe  than  to  take  care  of  the  little  ailments  with  the  great  ones,  and 
much  better  aware  than  we  are  how  easily  the  little  become  great  ones.  In- 
deed, apart  from  direct  and  immediate  safety,  it  would  be  better  policy  for  us 
to  call  a  physician  in  these  small  matters,  because  through  them  the  physician 
learns  our  constitutions  and  the  habits  of  our  systems,  and  is  better  able  to 
handle  for  us  the  larger  troubles  when  they  appear.  The  child  taken  in  the 
night  with  the  deadly  chill  of  scarlet  fever  is  dosed  by  the  frightened  mother 
till  its  power  of  sustaining  itself  is  gone  before  the  doctor  comes,  and  another, 
seized  with  internal  pains,  has  by  the  fondest  love  and  effort  a  supposed  remedy 
sent  tearing  and  ripping  a  murderous  way  through  its  little  body  that  should 
have  been  left  absolutely  quiescent.  And  the  instances  are  multipliable  almost 
to  infinity  where  mistaken  love  has  put  the  sick  one  beyond  help  because  rely- 
ing too  much  on  family  tradition  and  the  wisdom  of  past  generations. 

Still,  as  the  physician  can  not  always  be  had,  and  one  is  loath  to  call  him 
in  the  night  unless  the  case  be  extreme,  it  follows  that  we  shall  go  on  adminis- 
tering the  wrong  dose,  with  the  best  intention  and  the  worst  result  for  some 
time  to  come.  Much  of  this  might  be  obviated  if,  instead  of  a  good  deal  of  use- 
less knowledge  taught  in  the  schools,  and  expected  to  be  learned,  there  were 
taught  and  obliged  to  be  learned  a  sufficient  preliminary  knowledge  of  physi- 
ology for  every  girl  to  know  the  structure  of  her  frame,  and  how  wonderfully 
she  is  made.  It  would  seem  as  if  neither  man  nor  woman  should  venture  to 
undertake  the  management  of  a  household  and  the  rearing  of  children  till  they 
know  something  of  what  it  is  they  undertake,  with  such  issues  of  life  and  death 
in  their  hands.  And  whenever  this  shall  be  an  absolute  requirement  of  early 
education  we  may  rest  assured  that  the  health  of  the  community  will  be  on  a 
far  superior  basis  to  that  in  which  remedies  are  used  ignorantly,  according  to 
hearsay,  or  to  the  misinformed  grandmother's  well-meant  advice,  and  we 
shall  have  heard  the  last  of  those  household  remedies,  hardly  beyond  comparison 
with  some  of  which  was  the  former  administration  of  bird-shot  to  an  old  per- 
son troubled  with  "rising  of  the  lights." 

And  there  is  another  thing  in  the  way  of  health  on  which  the  grandmother 


358  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

•will  be  very  apt  to  interfere,  and  that  is  the  amount  of  sleep  the  children  (and 
for  the  matter  of  that  the  rest  of  the  family)  take.  Old  people,  it  is  well 
known,  sleep  less  than  the  young  do,  and  it  is  a  foible  of  theirs  to  insist  that 
the  young  shall  have  as  little  as  they  find  sufficient  for  themselves.  "  Early  to 
bed  and  early  to  rise  makes  a  man  healthy  and  wealthy  and  wise, "  is  a  distich 
they  love  to  quote,  and  they  are  often  of  the  opinion  of  those  people  who  plume 
themselves  upon  the  fact  of  their  early  rising  as  upon  some  virtuous  achieve- 
ment. 

The  Right  Sleep. 

One  might  infer  from  their  conversation  and  behavior  that  the  taking  of  a 
sufficient  quantity  of  rest  was  a  sinful  indulgence  of  the  senses,  and  that  the 
height  of  innocence  and  intellectuality  lay  in  the  involuntary  nervous  restless- 
ness that  will  not  or  can  not  stay  at  peace,  but,  like  the  doubtless  good  and 
surely  disturbing  woman  in  Proverbs,  has  the  maids  up  in  the  middle  of  the 
night  for  their  tasks.  All  this  is  disagreeable  enough  when  it  occurs  among 
individuals  having  no  positive  power  over  each  other  by  which  one  may  be 
deprived  of  the  really  needed  sleep ;  but  when  it  occurs  among  those  that  have 
either  the  moral  or  the  material  power  to  direct  movements,  as  between  parent 
and  child,  the  old  and  the  young,  husband  and  wife,  mistress  and  servant,  the 
thing  becomes  a  tyranny. 

During  all  the  hours  of  wakefulness  the  brain  is  in  a  constant  state  of 
activity — for  it  is  impossible  to  be  awake  and  conscious  without  thought  and 
emotion — and  therefore  of  waste  so  far  as  this  activity  is  understood  to  use  the 
substance  of  the  brain.  "  Its  substance,"  remarks  a  noted  observer,  "  is  con. 
sumed  by  every  thought,  by  every  action  of  the  will,  by  every  sound  that  is 
heard,  by  every  object  that  is  seen,  by  every  substance  that  is  touched,  by  every 
odor  that  is  smelled,  by  every  painful  or  pleasurable  sensation,  and  so  each  in- 
stant of  our  lives  witnesses  the  decay  of  some  portion  of  its  mass  and  the 
formation  of  new  material  to  take  its  place.  The  necessity  for  sleep  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  during  our  waking  moments  the  formation  of  the  new  substance 
does  not  go  on  as  rapidly  as  the  decay  of  the  old.  The  state  of  comparative  re- 
pose which  attends  upon  this  condition  allows  the  balance  to  be  restored,  and 
hence  the  feeling  of  freshness  and  rejuvenation  we  experience  after  a  sound 
and  healthy  sleep.  The  more  active  the  mind,  the  greater  the  necessity  for 
sleep,  just  as  with  a  steamer,  the  greater  the  number  of  revolutions  its  engines 
makes,  the  more  imperative  is  the  demand  for  fuel." 

Thus  it  is  apparent  that  in  sleep  this  waste  of  the  brain  is  repaired,  and 
during  sleep,  if  the  brain  is  at  all  active,  but  a  small  portion  of  it  is  so,  as  any 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS  359 

one  can  see  by  the  slight  and  superficial  character  of  dreams.  So  long  as  the 
brain  does  not  feel  the  strain,  one  is  wakeful  and  alert ;  but  when  repair  be- 
comes necessary,  it  feels  the  amount  of  feebleness  which  makes  sleep  desirable, 
and  produces  irritability  and  torture  without  it.  A  person  deprived  of  sleep 
has  no  resource  but  those  drugs  and  stimulants  and  that  enfeebled  general  con- 
dition which  are  the  authors  of  much  disaster,  or  else  insanity  in  its  various 
forms;  for  when  that  state  appears  in  which  it  is  impossible  to  sleep,  then  the 
overstrained  brain  is  unable  to  make  repairs,  and  disease  is  already  there  or 
impending. 

When  it  so  happens  that  one  individual  in  all  the  house  wakes  betimes, 
either  from  habit  or  choice,  or  because  the  brain  and  body  do  not  require  so 
much  rest  as  do  those  of  others,  what  worst  despotism  could  there  be  than  the 
requirement  that  everybody  else  under  the  roof  should  conform  to  that  stand- 
ard of  early  rising,  and  be  up  and  about,  whether  it  is  simple  misery  or  not  to 
rise  just  as  the  last  sweet  dregs  of  sleep  make  the  soul  heavy  and  the  body  a 
weight  well-nigh  impossible  to  lift.  The  hours  of  mounting  morning  are  de- 
lightful— fresh  and  bright  and  dewy,  what  is  there  to  exceed  their  cheer?  But 
if  you  are  drooping  with  unrested  weariness,  it  is  hard  to  see  the  cheer ;  and  if 
you  are  worthless  before  the  noon  comes  because  of  your  early  rising,  and  have 
to  pay  your  way  with  a  nap  by  the  afternoon,  what  advantage  is  there  in  time? 
In  truth,  nothing  that  you  do  all  day  will  be  done  well,  and  everything  will 
drag,  so  that  the  difference  in  your  life's  accomplishment,  if  you  rise  early  or  if 
you  sleep  your  sleep  out,  will  be  evident  to  any  one  that  takes  the  pains  to  in- 
vestigate, while  the  difference  in  your  state  of  feeling  does  not  need  to  be  inves- 
tigated by  anybody,  but  is  as  apparent  to  everybody  else  as  it  is  disagreeable 
to  yourself. 

The  very  aged,  as  it  is  well  known,  do  not  require  so  much  sleep  by  a  large 
degree  as  others  do,  for  the  less  activity  of  the  brain  with  them,  of  the  nervous 
system,  and  in  fact  of  the  whole  system,  makes  less  repair  necessary,  and  thus 
less  demand  for  sleep;  and  this  being  so  it  is  odd  that  they  are  so  inclined  to 
make  a  virtue  of  the  fact,  when,  in  addition,  it  is  true  that  if  they  did  not  rise 
early  they  would  be  very  uncomfortable  in  bed. 

But  children,  on  the  other  hand,  require  a  vast  amount  of  sleep,  for  in 
their  case  the  constructive  processes  are  lively,  and  it  is  a  lesson  which  their 
elders  can  not  too  often  repeat  to  themselves,  that  these  little  people  must  be 
let  alone  till  nature  dismisses  them  from  the  land  of  dreams  back  to  the  world 
of  sunbeams. 

Those  in  middle  life,  again,  save  for  the  exceptional  cases,  also  need  sleep 
in  greater  proportion  than  when  more  advanced,  although  in  no  such  measure 
as  children  do.  But  one  need  only  to  think  of  the  state  of  all  but  perpetual 


360  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

motion  in  which  children's  thoughts  are,  to  say  nothing  of  their  work  of  recep- 
tivity when  all  the  world  presents  itself  in  its  varying  phases  for  the  first  time 
to  their  apprehension — to  be  seen,  to  be  wondered  at,  to  be  comprehended,  to 
be  enjoyed,  to  be  remembered,  to  be  generalized  from — to  understand  that 
both  the  waste  and  the  repair  must  be  tremendous,  and  he  is  ruinously  heed- 
less, or  else  willing  to  mutilate  the  intelligence,  who  prevents  a  child  from, 
getting  this  needed  repair  in  sleep,  simply  because  it  is  convenient  to  have  the 
family  breakfast  together  at  seven  o'clock,  or  because  the  school  bell  rings  at 
nine,  or  because  it  used  to  be  so  in  grandmother's  day,  or  for  any  other 
reason  under  the  sky.  As  air  is  free  to  all,  so  should  sleep  be,  that  equally 
great  requisite  with  air  and  food,  and  to  deprive  one  of  the  due  quantity  is  the 
same  thing  as  to  deprive  one  of  food,  and  is  a  species  of  starvation  perhaps  more 
cruel  than  another,  for  it  starves  the  brain  and  the  body,  too.  ' '  Sleep  that  knits 
up  the  raveled  sleave  of  care  "  is  sweet  to  all,  a  luxury  to  some,  but  to  the 
weary  and  to  children  it  is  vital.  And  if  it  were  not  vital,  is  not  the  world  a  hard 
place  enough  to  live  in  ?  and  have  not  children  who  have  the  rule  of  three  or 
the  irregular  verbs  to  learn,  under  the  best  of  circumstances,  a  hard  time  in  the 
future  ?  and  is  it  well  to  call  them  back  to  all  this  hardness  when  they  are  in 
that  rosy,  dewy,  happy  world  the  gates  of  which  are  sleep  ? 


the   Grandmother's  Chair. 

But  when  the  grandmothers  do  not  insist  upon  their  too  old-fashioned 
recipes  in  case  of  illness,  and  do  not  demand  too  early  rising  on  the  part  of  the 
children,  and  are,  in  fact,  what  grandmothers  ought  to  be,  what  treasures  they 
are  in  a  family,  especially  at  the  twilight  hour !  It  is  they  who  have  all  the 
family  traditions  and  know  how  to  tell  them,  who  keep  the  genealogical  tables, 
and  are  wise  in  the  family  connection  to  the  third  and  fourth  generation.  It 
is  they  who  are  storehouses  of  story  and  of  song,  song  which  they  sing  in 
quavering  voices  which  to  the  hearers  are  infinitely  sweet;  and  it  is  they  who- 
recite  to  us  the  old  ballads  and  poems  which  first  teach  the  love  of  poetry.  And 
what  greater  gift  could  they  give  than  the  joy  and  comfort  that  through  life 
come  with  the  love  of  poetry  ?  We  sometimes  meet  people  who  tell  us  they 
have  little  or  no  love  of  poetry;  we  always  think  they  could  have  had  no  grand- 
mothers.   

Delight  in  Poetry. 

To  them  the  most  exquisite  images  fail  to  convey  an  idea,  and  they  see  in 
sapphic  or  lyric  nothing  but  a  promiscuous  whirl  of  smooth  words,  not  unpleas- 
ant in  their  jingle  for  a  little  while,  but  rather  tiresome  in  their  monotony  after 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  361 

a  page  or  two,  while  sometimes  the  finest  raptures  of  the  poets  seem  to  be  only 
scaling,  in  their  eyes,  the  heights  of  absurdity. 

Such  people,  speaking  literally,  deserve  a  vast  amount  of  compassion. 
They  are  shut  out  from  a  literal  paradise  of  sound  and  sight  and  fancy,  and  at 
first  glance  are  even  more  pitiable  than  those  with  no  ear  for  music;  for  the 
one  would  appear  to  be  but  a  defect  of  the  body,  the  other  of  the  soul.  For 
surely  they  who  receive  no  pleasure  from 

"soft  Lydian  airs 
Married  to  immoital  verse, 
Such  as  the  meeting  soul  may  pierce 
In  notes,  with  many  a  winding  bout 
Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out. 
With  wanton  heed,  and  giddy  cunning. 
The  melting  voice  through  mazes  running, 
Untwisting  all  the  chains  that  tie 
The  hidden  soul  of  harmony" — 

surely  they  lose  a  pleasure  only  less  in  kind  than  that  lost  by  those  who  see  no- 
beauty  in  the  words  that  describe  those  airs,  nor  in  the  ideas  that  they  convey. 
Such  people  should  find  no  charm  in  that  most  alluring,  most  mystical  of 
sounds,  the  airy  voice  of  the  echo  of  the  hills,  "  Sweet  queen  of  parley,  daugh- 
ter of  the  spheres. " 

Poetry  is  the  first  blossom  of  all  literature.  Long  before  history  was  ever 
heard  of,  before  philosophy  began  to  think,  before  fiction  had  a  fancy,  the  light- 
hearted  of  the  race  began  to  sing.  It  might  seem,  then,  as  if  this  art  had  had 
time  to  come  to  perfection  that  the  other  branches  needed  generations  to  attain. 
In  fact,  it  has  learned  to  interpret  nature  as  no  other  art  can  yet  do.  What 
rigure-painter,  what  flesh-painter,  what  painter  of  interiors,  what  prodigal  of 
colors  can  equal  the  picture  that  Keats  makes  of  Madeline  : 

"A  casement  high  and  triple-arched  there  was, 

All  garlanded  with  carven  imageries 

Of  fruits  and  flowers  and  bunches  of  knot-grass, 

And  diamonded  with  panes  of  quaint  device, 

Innumerable  of  stains  and  splendid  dyes 

As  are  the  tfger-moth's  deep-damasked  wings; 

And  in  the  midst,  'mong  thousand  heraldries 

And  twilight  saints  and  dim  emblazonings, 

A  shielded  scutcheon  blushed  with  blood  of  queens  and  kings. 

Full  on  this  casement  shone  the  wintry  moon. 

And  threw  warm  gules  on  Madeline's  fair  breast 

As  down  she  knelt  for  Heaven's  grace  and  boon; 

Rose-bloom  fell  on  her  hands  together  prest, 

And  on  her  silver  cross  soft  amethyst. 

And  on  her  hair  a  glory." 


362  .         STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS 

What  landscape  painter  could  spread  more  beauty  on  his  labored   canvas  of 
many  feet  in  size  and  many  months  in  work  than  Tennyson  has  shut  into  four 

little  lines: 

"How  faintly  flushed,  how _phantom-f air 
Was  Monte  Rosa,  hanging  there 

A  thousand  shadowy-penciled  valleys 
And  snowy  dells  in  a  golden  air!" 

What  sculptor  of  marbles  of  world-wide  fame,  and  for  which  kings  con- 
tend, of  Jbves  and  Caesars,  can  let  us  see  any  more  statuesque  sight  than 
Browning  gives  us  when  he  draws  old  Hildebrand: 

''See  him  stand. 

Buttressed  upon  his  mattock,  Hildebrand 
Of  the  huge  brain-mask,  welded  ply  o'er  ply 
As  in  a  forge ;  it  buries  either  eye 
White  and  extinct  that  stupid  brow ;  teeth  clenched. 
The  neck  tight-corded,  too,  the  chin  deep-trenched 
As  if  a  cloud  enveloped  him,  while  fought 
Under  its  shade,  grim  prizers,  thought  with  thought 
At  dead  lock  agonizing  he,  until 
The  victor  thought  leaped  radiant  up,  and  Will, 
The  slave  with  folded  arms  and  drooping  lids 
They  fought  for,  lean  fortn,  flame-like,  as  it  bids ! " 

And  what  piper  playing  with  cunning  pipes  can  let  us  see  beauty  and 
"hear  music  at  one  and  the  same  time  as  Swinburne  lets  us  do  in  one  of  the 
verses  of  "Atalanta  " — 

"The  ivy  falls  with  the  Bacchanal's  hair 

Over  her  eyebrows,  shading  her  eyes ; 
The  wild  vine,  slipping  down,  leaves  bare 

Her  bright  breast  shortening  into  sighs ; 
The  wild  vine  slips  with  the  weight  of  its  leaves, 
But  the  berried  ivy  catches  and  cleaves 
To  the  limbs  that  glitter,  the  feet  that  scare 

The  wolf  that  follows,  the  faun  that  flies ;" 

•or  as  Dryden  does  in  the  sweet  falls  and  returns  and  chimes  ringing  through 
every  ode  he  ever  wrote ;  or  as  Milton  causes  to  move  along  all  his  heroic 
measures;  as  haunts  the  songs  of  Shakespeare,  as  blows  like  trumpet  peels 
through  all  the  Border  ballads  ? 

All  these  arts— the  painter's,  the  sculptor's,  the  singer's — the  poet  com- 
bines in  his  own,  and  that  all  these  arts  are  capable  of  yielding,  provided  only 
that  his  song  does  not  fall  upon  a  deaf  ear,  that  his  picture  and  his  carving  are 
not  set  before  a  blind  eye.  For  in  order  to  gather  all  the  wealth  that  there  is  in 
a  poem,  one  must  be  in  some  degree  a  poet  one's  self;  that  is,  if  not  an  ex- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  363 

ecutive  poet,  as  one  may  term  it,  an  appreciative  one.  We  have  to  look  in  a 
mirror  to  see  our  own  image  reflected,  and  the  poet  can  not  paint  h;s  picture  or 
call  up  his  echo  except  upon  an  answering  surface. 

Nor  is  this  enjoyment  and  appreciation  of  poets  altogether  a  natural  gift; 
it  is  capable  of  growing  from  a  small  germ  and  enlarging  itself  to  full  bounds, 
although  undoubtedly  the  germ  there  must  always  be.  He  who  is  going  to 
love  music,  hears  his  mother  singing  it  beside  his  cradle,  till,  through  sweet 
accustoming  and  tender  memory,  the  strain  becomes  a  part  of  his  being  and 
draws  other  strains  to  keep  it  company ;  and  thus  the  imaginative  faculty  of 
the  child,  together  with  his  love  of  melody,  has  usually  to  be  stimulated  by 
early  usage,  in  order  that  this  chief  of  all  the  pleasures  shall  be  his  in  its  perfec- 
tion by:and-by. 

"  Next  to  the  language  of  poetry,"  says  Willmott,  "  is  the  tone  of  its  voice. 
It  makes  love  to  the  ear,  and  wins  it  with  music.  Certain  passages  possess  a 
beauty  altogether  unconnected  with  their  meaning.  The  reader  is  conscious  of 
a  strange,  dreamy  sense  of  enjoyment,  as  of  lying  upon  warm  grass  in  a  June 
evening,  while  a  brook  tinkles  over  stones  in  the  glimmer  of  trees.  Sidney 
records  the  effect  of  the  old  ballad  on  himself,  and  Spence  informs  us  that  he 
never  repeated  particular  lines  cf  delicate  modulation  without  a  shiver  in  his 
blood  not  to  be  expressed.  Boyle  was  conscious  of  a  tremor  at  the  utterance  of 
two  verses  in  Lucan,  and  Derham  knew  one  to  have  a  chill  about  his  head  upon 
reading  or  hearing  the  fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah  and  David's  lamenta- 
tion for  Jonathan.  How  deep  is  the  magic  of  sound  may  be  learned  by  break- 
ing some  sweet  verses  into  prose.  The  operation  has  been  compared  to  gather- 
ing dew-drops,  which  shine  like  jewels  upon  the  flowers,  but  run  into  water  in 
the  hand.  The  elements  remain,  but  the  sparkle  is  gone." 

Surely  it  is  the  last  gift  the  divine  powers  can  give,  this  love  of  poetry. 
They  who  possess  it  can  be  content  with  little  else  besides;  it  can  bring  palaces 
and  the  pleasures  of  palaces  into  hovels,  it  can  make  the  Barmecide's  feast  a 
satisfactory  banquet,  and  can  play  at  ail  times  the  part  of  fairy  godmother  to 
any  Cinderella's  rags.  It  is,  like  virtue,  its  own  exceeding  great  reward. 
Those  that  have  loved  it  it  never  forsakes.  It  is  eyes  to  the  blind  and  ears  to 
the  deaf;  it  spreads  morning  and  bird-song  and  flowers  and  dew  on  the  dark 
field  of  the  sleepless  night;  it  is  sunshine  in  the  dreariest  day;  it  lends  to  the 
old  the  blush  and  fire  of  youth  again.  Some  young  savage,  blowing  through 
his  plucked-up  reed,  may  have  invented  the  first  instruments  of  music;  some 
idler,  scratching  the  rude  outline  of  another  with  a  chance  bit  of  red  ochre  on  a 
rock  may  have  invented  painting;  some  uncouth  genius  may  have  imagined 
the  god  slumbering  in  the  stone,  and  have  cut  him  out  and  set  him  up  to  wor- 
ship; all  these  arts  men  may  have  established;  but  poetry,  that  enchantment 


3<M  DRAWING  AND  SCULPTURE  DURING  THE  PALAEOLITHIC 


EPOCH. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  365 

where  melody  flows  through  all  the  mould  of  words,  where  every  word  is  color 
and  every  modulation  form,  where  the  heart  and  the  soul  enter,  where  the  tear 
trembles  and  the  smile  kindles — poetry,  that  union  of  music  and  beauty,  is  the 
gift  of  the  Lord  Himself. 

And  if  the  grandmother,  when  the  children  cluster  about  her,  has  suc- 
ceeded in  filling  them  with  the  love  of  this  divine  gift,  this  comforter  and  con- 
soler, she  has  given  them  as  firm  a  stepping  stone  to  happiness  as  they  will 
find  in  purely  earthly  things — I  say  earthly,  and  yet  surely  it  is  something  close 
upon  the  heavenly,  too. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  children  that  find  happiness  in  the  grandmother;  it  is 
the  grandmother  that  finds  happiness  in  the  children.  And  how  our  grand- 
mother found  it  and  made  her  life  a  blissful  thing  when  she  took  the  children 
into  it,  the  story  of  Mrs.  Penn  instructs  us.  It  is  the  story  of  a  perpetual 
thanksgiving. 

A  Perpetual  Thanksgiving. 

It  was  certainly  a  dreary  house,  Mrs.  Penn's,  and  never  more  so  than  when 
the  autumn  sun  sent  the  shadows  of  the  hills  across  it  in  the  early  afternoon, 
and  cast  a  double  gloom  throughout  the  great  solitary  rooms  and  the  long  pas- 
sages. 

The  servants  went  and  came  noiselessly ;  no  foot  in  it  fell  more  loudly  than 
the  autumn  leaves,  and  Mrs.  Penn  trailed  her  widow's  gowns  through  its  soli- 
tudes, sometimes  feeling  as  if  she  were  buried  alive,  and  with  a  listlessness  that 
said  she  did  not  greatly  care  if  she  were. 

.  On  the  outskirts  of  the  village  neighbors  were  few,  and  friends  came 
rarely.  There  were  almost  no  outside  interests.  Mrs.  Penn  read  the  books 
that  came  up  from  town,  and  sent  the  box  back  and  had  another,  and  did  some 
endless  embroideries.  And  every  morning  she  opened  her  eyes  with  a  dull 
sense  of  oppression  and  regret  that  the  day  was  to  do  over  again;  and  she 
always  cried  a  little  at  twilight,  and  said  to  herself  that  her  husband,  who  had 
been  very  much  her  senior  and  had  indulged  her  with  every  desire  of  her  heart, 
would  have  resented  her  loneliness  and  want  of  happiness. 

The  coming  of  the  one  daily  mail  meant  but  little  to  her,  for  her  friends 
had  their  own  interests  and  families  ;  and,  except  in  the  midsummer,  when 
the  mountains  were  to  be  climbed,  she  had  so  little  to  offer  them  by  way  of  enter- 
tainment that  she  had  long  ceased  to  ask  them  under  her  roof  ;  her  few  letters 
were  spasmodic  and  brief,  and  her  sole  regular  correspondent  was  her  husband's 
granddaughter  by  his  first  marriage,  Eva  Robson,  who  resided  abroad  with  her 
babies,  Mr.  Robson  bavin<r  a  small  consulate  and  living  much  too  luxuriously, 


366  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


HER  FEW    LETTERS  WERE  SPASMODIC   AND  BRIEF. 

as  Mrs.  Penn  thought,  on  his  wife's  inheritance  frtmi  her  grandfather.  "  No, 
Eliza,"  said  Mrs.  Penn,  to  the  person  who  united  in  herself  the  functions  of 
friend  and  lady's  maid  and  housekeeper,  and  who  had  come  in  to  see  about 


STEPPING    STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  367 

infe  a  certain  monstrous  bird  for  dinner  six  weeks  off,  the  young  girl. 
Sally  Bowen,  who  had  reared  it,  being  then  in  the  kitchen.  "  No.  What  should 
I  do  with  such  an  affair  as  that— an  overgrown,  unnatural,  unhealthy  fowl  !  I 
don't  see  why  we  should  have  a  turkey  at  all,  if  it  comes  to  that." 

l<  Because  every  one  else  does,"  said  Eliza  stoutly. 

"  We  have  turkeys  often  enough  on  other  days, "said  Mrs.  Penn,  still  look- 
ing over  her  silks  for  the  shade  she  wished. 

"  But  Thanksgiving  Day,"1  persisted  Eliza. 

"What  is  Thanksgiving  Day  to  me  ?  " 

"  Ma'am  !  " 

''  What  is  Thanksgiving  Day  to  me  ?    What  have  I  to  be  thankful  for  ?  M 

"Well,  ma  am,"  said  Eliza,  who  was  on  the  intimate  footing  given  by 
having  lived  with  Mrs.  Penn  since  she  was  born,  "  you're  alive,  and  you're 
well " 

"I  don't  consider  that  anything  to  be  thankful  for,"  said  Mrs.  Penn.  "  I'm 
not  at  all  thankful  to  be  alive— I'd  rather  be  dead.  And  being  alive  I've  a  right 
to  be  well  !  " 

"  I  suppose  Charity  Bowen  thinks  she  has  a  right  to  be  well,  too — bedrid- 
den for  twenty  years,"  said  Eliza,  in  whom  the  ways  of  the  household  and  the 
habit  of  years  had  fostered  an  easy  familiarity.  "  And.  perhaps,  she  would  be 
better  for  the  medicines  if  they  could  afford  the  difference  between  selling  the 
turkey  here  and  selling  it  to  the  middle-man.'1 

4k  She  can  have  all  the  medicines  she  wants,  and  you  know  it  very  well  !  '* 

"•  They're  a  proud  and  honest  folk,  Mrs.  Penn." 

"  Oh,  for  goodness'  sake,  Eliza,  buy  the  turkey,  if  that's  what  you  want. 
But  you  mustn't  keep  it  for  any  supposititious  Thanksgiving  Day.  You  can 
have  it  to-morrow, M 

tk  It  won't  be  ready  to-morrow.  They  don't  expect  to  kill  it  till  the  last 
week  in  November." 

"  Well,  do  as  you  please.  If  you're  set  upon  eating  turkey  by  way  of 
expressing  any  annual  pressure  of  thanks,  why,  eat  it  1  Only  don't  expect  me 
to  do  so.  I'm  not  at  all  thankful  for  the  privilege  of  living  in  a  tomb" 

"•  It  looks  like  a  tomb,'"  said  Eliza,  gazing  down  the  stately  room,  with  its 
rich  rugs,  its  old  portraits,  its  china  placques,  its  glowing  fire,  its  flowers  in 
crystal  vases,  its  books'and  silken  cushions  and  deep  chairs. 

"  No  matter  what  it  looks  like;  it  is  a  tomb.  And  I  am  just  as  dead  in  it 
as  if  the  bells  had  tolled  for  me." 

"  You'll  have  to  excuse  me,  ma'am,  but  if  I  talked  that  way  you'd  say  I  was 
tempting  Providence." 

"To  what?"  demanded  Mrs.  Penn. 


368  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

"  For  my  part,"  said  the  desperate  Eliza,  goaded  by  long  series  of  similar 
outbursts,  "  where  the  Lord  puts  me  I  expect  He  puts  me  for  something." 

Mrs.  Penn  looked  at  her  with  almost  a  gleam  of  amusement  in  her  eyes. 
"Oh,  I'll  excuse  you,"  said  she.     "Anything  by  way  of  a  diversion.     One  must 

have  conversation,  even  if  it's  with  an  impertinent" But  Eliza  gently 

closed  the  door,  and  the  opportunity  for  further  conversation,  too,  before  the 
word  "servant"  should  offend  her  ears. 

Mrs.  Penn  put  away  her  silks;  it  was  too  dark  to  match  the  shades,  and, 
gathering"  lier  threads  to  put  in  the  fire,  walked  up  and  down  the  room.  "One 
mint  do  something  to  change  the  poles,"  she  said.  And  then  she  paused 
to  look  out  the  window  at  the  man  plodding  up  the  avenue  with  the  mail,  and 
then  at  the  gray  landscape — the  hills  already  black  with  shadow,  a  dull  rose  in 
the  upper  air  above  the  rising  mists,  where  a  couple  of  crows  flapped  heavily, 
all  fading  to  dim,  melancholy  outlines  and  a  promise  of  coming  storm.  "  And 
one  night  just  like  another,  and  one  day  just  like  another,"  she  murmured,  as 
she  turned  and  sat  down  before  the  fire,  lifting  her  skirt  daintily,  for  all  it  was 
no  matter,  she  said,  whether  it  scorched  or  not.  "I  don't  know  why  I  care," 
she  said.  "There  isn't  anything  any  matter.  And  as  for  me,  I'm  not  as  much 
use  as  the  log  on  the  coals — that  is  good  for  something."  And  she  hid  her  face 
in  her  hands,  and  began  to  enjoy  her  favorite  twilight  diversion,  the  summing 
up  of  her  misfortunes  and  injuries  and  miseries,  and  if  she  could  have  had  a 
new  one  to  add  to  them  she  would  have  had  a  pang  of  satisfaction.  "My  hus- 
band dead,  my  children  dead,  my  people  dead,  shut  up  here  because  on  account 
of  my  hay -fever  I  can't  live  in  any  other  spot  on  earth;  without  a  friend  to  talk 
to  superior  to  a  servant,  without  an  object  in  life,  without  a  soul  to  love,  with- 
out a  soul  to  love  me — except — maybe— poor  Eliza — why  shouldn't  I  call  such 
an  existence  a  living  tomb?  Why  should  I  give  thanks  for  it?  It's  unbearable 
— the  solitude,  the  dreariness.  Oh,  I'm  so  lonely;  if  I  only  had  something  I 
could  love!"  she  exclaimed,  the  tears  trickling  through  her  fingers;  "if  I  only 
had  a  cat  to  love — and  I  don't  like  cats — I'd  as  lief  have  snakes  round  " 

Eliza  opened  the  door,  and  John  brought  in  the  lamps  and  went  out  again. 

"  The  mail,"  said  Eliza,  rather  loftily,  but  lingering  over  a  lamp  after  hand- 
ing Mrs.  Penn  the  newspaper  and  a  letter  with  foreign  stamps. 

"  Mercy  on  us!  "  cried  Mrs.  Penn.    "  A  black  border!   It's  from  Eva:  who 
in  the  world  is  she  in  mourning  for  ?  " 

"  Some  one  out  of  the  world,"  said  Eliza,  busying  herself  with  the  shade. 

"  And  sealed  with  black  wax — dear,  dear,  I  wonder  who  is  dead  now!  " 

"  If  you  would  open  it,"  said  the  irrepressible  Eliza,  "  you  would  find  out." 

"Oh,   Eliza,   how  unsympathetic  you   are!      When   you  know  it's  bad 
news  " 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  369 

"  Shall  I  open  it,  ma'am  ?  " 

"Yes,  Eliza,  do.     I  don't  know — I'm  all  of  a  tremble  " 

"There.  Here  it  is.  Now  you  can  read  it.  And  you  know  that  what- 
ever happens  to  Mrs.  Robson,  you've  been  in  the  way  of  thinking  it's  not  much 
matter  to  you." 

"Not  much  matter  to  me  ?  Oh,  Eliza!  "  cried  Mrs.  Penn,  whose  eyes  had 
been  rapidly  running  over  the  unfolded  sheet.  "Not  much  matter  to  me? 
Just  read  that,  and  see  if  it's  no  matter  to  me.  They're  coming  here!  " 

"My  gracious!"  said  Eliza,  taking  the  chance  presented  and  reading  a 
little  more  slowly.  "  Bag  and  baggage!  The  whole  kit  of  them!  " 

"  Every  one." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know  about  that.  Isn't  it  awful?  And  I  never  used  to 
.children." 

"  Eliza!  You  wouldn't  leave  me  now?" 

"Land  sakes!  Who  said  anything  about  leaving?"  exclaimed  Eliza,  who, 
having  played  dolls  and  gone  to  district  school  with  Mrs.  Penn,  had  been  her 
familiar  and  tyrant  ever  since.  "  How  could  I  leave  you — all  the  same  as 
born  and  bred  together!  I  wasn't  talking  of  leaving;  I  was  talking  of  this  Bed- 
lam upside-down." 

"  Yes,  Mr.  Robson  dead,  the  pcor  soul!  And  the  money  gone — I  always 
knew  it  would  go !  And  they  all  on  the  way  over.  And  Eva  wants  to  rest  here 
a  little,  and  then  leave  the  children  with  me  till  she  finds  work.  And  she  has 
no  one  else  to  turn  to.  And  that  means — oh,  I  don't  know  what  it  means! 
Eliza,  I  see  it  all  as  plainly  as  if  a  messenger  from  Heaven  declared  it — if  they 
come  here,  they  never  will  go  away!  And  they'll  be  here  any  day  now! 
There's  no  time,  there's  no  way  of  heading  them  off.  A  telegram  can't  reach 
people  in  mid-ocean !  " 

"The  poor  young  thing!"  cried  Eliza,  with  a  total  change  of  base. 
"  Alone  in  a  strange  country,  and  with  four  children — why  the  oldest  of  them 
isn't  ten!  And  crossing  the  sea  with  no  nurse,  and  seasick,  I'll  be  bound,  and 
without  a  penny  in  the  world — I  don't  wonder  it  makes  your  heart  ache, 
ma'am ! " 

"Oh,  yes,  yes — it's  all  very  terrible!  There's  so  much  trouble  in  the 
world.  It  seemed  as  if  I  had  enough  of  my  own  before  this." 

"  And  now  you've  got  hers." 

"And  oh,  Eliza,  just  think  of  it!  A  horde  of  children  overrunning  us. 
Only  picture  it !  This  room,  this  heaven  of  rest — what  a  den  of  confusion  it  is 
to  become !  The  books  will  be  ruined,  the  photographs — they  will  break  that 
dear  bust  of  the  Baby  Emperor  all  to  flinders,  just  as  sure  as  you  live !  Noth- 
ing will  be  safe.  There  will  be  finger-marks  on  the  windows  and  on  the  paint, 


370  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

crumbs  everywhere,  crusts  of  bread  and  jam,  and  half-eaten  apples  on  every 
chair  in  the  place — and  I  don't  dare  think  of  the  dining-room !  " 

"Then  I  wouldn't,  ma'am." 

'*  Oh,  how  can  I  help  it?  There  will  be  cries  and  screams  there  and  every- 
where else — those  children  never  can  have  had  any  bringing  up,  if  I  remember 
Eva. " 

"  Oh,  now,  ma'am !  " 

"Yes,  Eliza,  children  are  children  the  world  over,"  said  Mrs.  Penn,  as  if 
she  announced  a  new  fact  in  natural  history.  "  They'll  be  having  bad  dreams 
in  the  night  and  crying  enough  to  wake  the  dead,  and  they'll  be  carrying  on 
with  pillow  fights  before  daybreak,  and  I'll  lose  all  my  morning  nap — the  very 
best  sleep  I  have !  And  they'll  be  having  croup  and  measles,  and  you'll  have  to 
keep  the  house  still  then,  and  you  can't.  Oh,  I  know  what  children  are  in  a 
house !  And,  Eliza,  I'll  have  the  whole  of  them  to  clothe  and  feed !  Eva  Rob- 
son  do  anything  to  earn  money!  Oh,  Eliza,"  cried  Mrs.  Penn,  in  a  heart- 
broken voice,  "what  have  I  done  to  be  punished  this  way?  Wasn't  it  bad 
enough  before,  without  having  a  tribe  of  little  Mohawks  let  loose  in  my  house ! 
Oh,  I  can't  bear  it — I  shall  have  to  go  to  bed,  and  you  must  bring  me  some- 
thing hot  to  put  me  to  sleep;  and  oh,  it's  in  my  heart  to  wish  I  might  never 
wake  up !  It  will  be  the  death  of  me,  that's  what  it  will  be !  " 

And  Mrs.  Penn  tottered  off  to  bed,  and  her  tears  fell  into  the  unaccus- 
tomed refreshment  of  her  hot  dose;  for  Eliza  made  it,  and  she  made  it  strong, 
and  she  dreamed  that  all  the  cherubs  in  the  print  of  the  Madonna  standing  on 
the  moon  had  come  out  of  the  picture,  and  were  flying  through  the  room  and 
buzzing  around  her  pillow,  and  she  could  not  get  a  netting  stout  enough  to 
keep  them  out. 

It  was  some  days  before  Mrs.  Penn,  owing  to  the  results  of  her  unwonted 
excitement,  and  perhaps  of  her  unwonted  refreshment,  left  her  room. 
The  sunset  that  had  been  pouring  over  the  valley  had  fallen  into 
starry  dusk,  and  the  whistle  of  the  mail  train  was  sounding  far  off  on 
its  way  between  the  hills.  John  was  just  lighting  the  lamps.  "  I've 
come  down  stairs  for  one  last  hour  of  peace,"  she  said.  "  For  they  may  be 
here  any  day,  now.  To  think  I  shall  never  see  this  great  lovely  room  again  in 
any  decent  condition  till  those  children  go !  And  go  they  must !  I  will  have  my 
trustees  get  Eva  something  to  do  the  first  moment  possible.  And  if  they  can't 
and  worst  comes  to  worst,  she  can  take  half  my  income  and  go  away  some- 
where out  of  my  sight,  and  I'll  dismiss  half  the  servants  and  shut  up  half  the 
house.  L  cant  lose  all  my  rest!  I  will  have  some  sort  of  peace  in  my  declin- 
ing years !  "  She  rose  hurriedly  as  she  spoke,  and  set  the  cup  of  fragrant  tea 
that  Eliza  had  brought  her  on  the  mantel-shelf;  for  there  was  a  sound  of  beat- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  371 

ing  hoofs  on  the  avenue,  a  crackling  of  gravel  under  wheels,  a  furious  ringing 
of  the  big  doorbell,  an  outcry  of  voices,  and  suddenly  the  children  were  swarm- 
ing all  over  her,  with  cold  lifted  faces  and  clasping  arms,  and  little  Penn  was 
raising  his  voice  in  tears,  and  some  one  was  bringing  in  the  mother  and  laying 
her  on  a  sofa,  where  she  quietly  fainted  away. 

Mrs.  Penn  gave  herself  and  her  condition  and  her  apprehension  one  wild 
hurried  half  moment;  and  then  the  woman  in  her  rose  triumphant,  and  she 
ran  to  Eva  with  her  smelling  salts,  and  she  snatched  the  water  from  a  bowl  of 
violets  with  which  to  sprinkle  her  white  face,  and  called  for  Thomas  to  drive 
post-haste  for  the  doctor,  and  with  the  children  exclaiming  and  wailing  and 
tumbling  about  her,  had  John  carry  the  insensible  form  up  to  the  best  room, 
that  Eliza  had  already  aired  and  warmed  on  a  peradventure.  And  then  Mrs. 
Penn  and  Eliza,  between  them,  got  off  the  prostrate  woman's  clothes,  and 
bathed  her  with  alcohol  and  warm  water,  and  put  on  her  Mrs.  Penn's  very  best 
laced  and  tucked  and  ribboned  night-dress;  and  that  done,  Eliza  went  to  see 
to  the  children  and  give  them  their  supper  and  put  them  also  to  bed. 

"  Just  a  spark  of  life  left/'  said  Dr.  Thorns.  "  Danger  of  heart  failure.  A 
weak  heart,  anyway.  She  will  have  to  owe  her  life  to  your  care,  Mrs.  Penn,  if 
she  comes  round.  I'll  be  in  again  in  a  couple  of  hours.'' 

And  when,  after  midnight,  he  had  done  his  best  and  left  his  further  orders, 
Mrs.  Penn  did  not  even  pause  to  wonder  at  herself  for  the  eagerness  with  which 
she  obeyed  him,  for  the  way  in  which  all  night  she  kept  the  bottles  of  hot 
water  packed  about  the  frame  where  the  vital  action  was  so  low,  administered 
the  restoratives,  and  hung  upon  the  faltering  breath,  and  when  at  last  toward 
morning  she  felt  an  answering  pressure  of  the  frail  hand  she  held  and  saw  the 
eyelids  flutter,  and  a  glance  of  recognition  come  and  go,  she  went  to  the  window, 
with  her  heart  swelling  in  her  throat,  and  she  looked  out  upon  the  great  stars 
flashing  in  the  sky,  with  a  sense  of  kinship  she  had  never  had  before,  as  if  she, 
too,  were  fulfilling  some  office  in  the  universe;  for  the  doctor  had  said  this  life 
depended  on  her,  and  she  was  saving  it. 

The  doctor  had  telegraphed,  when  he  first  left  the  house,  for  a  couple  of 
trained  nurses,  and  they  arrived  in  the  morning,  and  Eliza  kept  the  children  in 
a  distant  part  of  the  house,  and  Mrs.  Penn  had  a  long  slumber  before  she  came 
down  to  tea,  and  found  little  Irene,  the  ten-year-old  child,  mothering  the  brood, 
as  if  she  had  long  been  used  to  it,  and  in  a  way  that  first  made  Mrs.  Penn  open 
her  eyes  wide  and  then  filled  them  with  tears.  "I  declare!"  Eliza  had  said 
to  her  before  she  came  down,  "  the  way  that  child  carries  the  load  of  all  the 
other  children  is  enough  to  break  your  heart,  the  little  woman!"  Mrs.  Penn 
took  Penn,  the  two-year-old  baby,  on  her  lap,  and  fed  him  herself,  carried  him 
into  the  drawing-room  and  warmed  his  feet  by  the  fire  there,  and  undressed  him, 


372  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Irene  hovering  about  to  placate  him  if  need  be,  and  sang  him  to  sleep  in  her 
arms,  and  carried  him  to  his  little  bed  at  last,  and  went  to  her  own  wearied  but 
full  of  sense  of  dut)r  done  that  was  as  novel  as  it  was  agreeable.  "  I'm  sure 
Mr.  Penn  would  be  pleased,"  she  said,  and  fell  asleep. 

She  was  waked  in  the  morning  by  a  patter  of  little  feet  and  a  disturbance 
of  the  coverlet,  and  a  little  white-robed  creature  in  the  gray  morning  twilight 
was  creeping  into  bed  with  her,  and  two  little  arms  were  round  her  neck,  and 
a  little  rosy  cheek  was  touching  hers,  and  a  silver  voice  was  cooing  in  her  half 
bewildered  ear  :  "  I  love  'oo.  I  love  'oo  vewy  mush !  " 

"  Bless  his  little  heart!"  she  said  to  Irene,  who  had  pattered  in  after  him 
to  hinder  his  waking  her.  "  Here,  here,  you  come  round  and  get  in  the  other 
side.  You'll  have  your  death  o'  cold !  John  hasn't  shaken  down  the  furnace 
yet."  And  the  little  adventurer  lay  between  them,  and  she  turned  to  stretch 
an  arm  over  both  of  them,  and  they  all  fell  asleep  again  together,  and  when  at 
length  Mrs.  Penn  awoke  again  and  saw  them,  a  sunbeam  stealing  in  and 
kindling  the  two  pretty  heads  to  gold,  she  knew  she  had  not  been  so  happy 
since  she  used  to  wake  and  see  Geoffrey  Penn's  head  on  the  other  pillow. 

It  was  Mrs.  Penn  herself  who  slipped  on  a  piece  of  half-eaten  gingerbread 
on  the  stair  carpet,  and  in  her  hurry  to  overtake  little  Penn,  who  had  fallen 
down,  forgot  to  remember  the  spot  it  made.  And  it  was  Eliza  who  gathered  a 
select  assortment  of  apple  cores  from  the  drawing-room  tables  and  said  nothing. 
And  it  was  Mrs.  Penn  who  sopped  with  her  own  napkin,  before  the  maid  could 
reach  it,  the  contents  of  Penn's  overturned  glass  of  milk,  and  had  to  take  him 
in  her  arms  then  for  the  remainder  of  the  dinner  time  to  quiet  his  frightened 
and  repentant  roaring. 

"  It's  singular,"  she  said  to  Eliza  next  day,  "but  I  don't  know  when  I've 
had  such  a  good  night's  rest." 

It  was  Mrs.  Penn  who  found  herself  buttering  bread  at  all  hours  of  the 
day,  taking  a  little  company  into  the  store-room  to  overlook  the  jams  and  cakes 
and  goodies  there,  telling  story  after  story  when  the  dark  came  on,  creeping 
in  to  look  at  the  little  sleepers  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and  visiting  the  sick 
room  with  breathless  and  soundless  caution,  and  crying  over  Eva  at  last  when 
she  had  been  lifted  to  the  lounge  and  was  able  to  hold  one  down  with  the  em- 
braces of  her  poor  weak  arms.  "You  are  so  good,"  sighed  Eva.  And  at 
another  time  she  murmured,  "Oh,  what  should  I  have  done  if  I  hadn't  had  you 
to  come  to !  " 

"I  am  sure  Mr.  Penn  would  be  pleased,''  Mrs.  Penn  said  again,  as  she  left 
the  room. 

If  you  had  happened  to  be  on  the  Pennfield  highway  any  pleasant  Novem- 
ber afternoon,  you  might  have  seen  Mrs.  Penn,  who  had  been  in  the  habit  of 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


373 


THAT      TURKEY       WILL 

BE  LOOKING  LIKE  A  BIG 

HEATHEN  GOD. 


"'  never  setting  her  foot  on  the 

ground,  walking  with  a  little 

rabble  of  children,  this  one  holding  her  finger,  and  that  one  her  skirt,  and 
investigating  ants'  holes  and  forsaken  nests  and  seed  vessels  and  the  like;  or 
you  might  have  met  her  coming  home  from  somewhere  and  holding  at  arm's 
length  and  by  the  nape  of  the  neck  a  scrawny  kitten  that  pawed  the  air,  of  which 
monster  she  was  terribly  afraid,  but  for  which  both  Penn  and  Irene  had 
chanced  to  express  a  wish. 

"  I  guess  I  would  let  that  go  till  regular  cleaning  day,"  said  Mrs.  Penn,  as 
Eliza  was  going  round  with  a  wet  cloth,  wiping  the  finger-marks  off  the  paint. 
"  It  might  hurt  their  feelings,  you  know." 

4 'That's  so,  ma'am." 

"  Do  you  mind  it  all  very  much  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Penn,  wistfully. 

"  Mind  it  !"  said  Eliza.  "It  seems  as  if  we  had  just  begun  to  live, 
ma'am." 

"  I  don't  know  but  it  does,  Eliza,"  said  Mrs.  Penn.  "  How  short  the  days 
are  growing  !  I  don't  seem  to  get  anything  accomplished." 

"  Except  making  these  dear  children  love  you,  ma'am." 

"  You're  as  silly  as  I  am,  Eliza." 

There  had  been  three  or  four  weeks  of  this  when,  one  day,  the  door  of  the 
mother's  room  being  left  open,  there  poured  in  upon  her  an  amazing  sound  of 


374  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

revelry.  Of  course  poor  Mrs.  Eva  did  not  know  that  Geoffrey  was  standing  in 
his  boots  on  the  velvet  sofa  to  better  inspect  a  "  Holy  Family"  with  his  lead 
pencil,  or  that  Penn  was  drumming  on  a  lacquered  tray  with  a  gold  filagree 
spoon,  or  that  Amy  was  meddling  with  the  big  Swiss  music  box,  or  that  Irene 
was  sitting  with  a  strew  of  precious  photographs  around  her,  to  which  the  others 
came  with  eager  fingers  and  loud  shouts  every  few  moments;  but  she  knew 
that  Pandemonium  was  reigning  there.  "Oh,"  she  murmured,  "you  will  be 
so  glad  when  they  go.  It  is  a  cruelty .  Your  quiet  house  !  How  can  you  bear 
it  ?  Oh,  I  know  it  is  an  imposition  !" 

"  What  are  you  talking  about  ?  "  exclaimed  Mrs.  Penn. 

"  But  you  see  I  am  gaining  so  fast  I  shall  be  downstairs  in  a  few  days. 
And  I  think  I  shall  be  able  to  get  a  position  in  the  Government  ;  it  has  been 
promised  to  me,  and  then  I  shall  relieve  you.  But  I  shall  never,  when  I  am 
gone — never,  never,  oh  never,  forget  your  goodness  in  taking  us  in  so !  " 

"When  you  are  gone!  My  dear  child,  you  are  talking  nonsense.  When 
you  are  gone  with  my  consent  will  be  the  day  after  never.  You  wouldn't  have 
the  heart,  now  would  you,  Eva,"  said  Mrs.  Penn,  the  tears  ready  to  start,  "to 
put  me  back  where  I  was  before  you  and  these  darling  children  came  into  the 
house  ?  Dead  and  alive — more  dead  than  alive  I  was — just  in  a  living  tomb ! " 

"  But  the  noise — the  mischief — the  confusion  " 

"Oh,  my  dear,  it  is  life !  I  used  to  think  so  much  of  my  pimlico  order, 
and  now  it  is  a  positive  pleasure  to  see  a  train  of  cars  and  a  circus  in  the  draw- 
ing room.  Eliza  and  I  were  saying  this  very  day  we  didn't  know  how  we  got 
along  before  you  came.  And  I  am  going  to  have  the  big  room  in  the  wing 
fitted  for  a  schoolroom,  and  the  room  between  for  a  nursery,  and  have  a  nurse 
for  Penn  and  Amy  and  a  governess  for  Geoffrey  and  Irene." 

"  But  oh,  the  expense ! " 

"Never  mind  the  expense!  It  was  their  grandfather's  money,  and  he 
would  rather  they  had  it,  I  know,  than  have  it  hoarded  for  a  lot  of  societies  in 
the  end.  And  they  shall !  I  am  making  you  an  allowance,  Eva,  and  I  shall  see 
to  all  the  rest.  Oh,  Eliza !  "  as  a  foot  drew  near  ;  "is  that  you,  Eliza  ?  What 
have  you  done  about  that  turkey  ?  I  wish  you'd  send  down  to  the  Bo  wens'  and 
see  if  it's  gone." 

"  It's  hanging  up  in  the  cold  cellar,  Mrs.  Penn,"  said  the  demure  Eliza. 

"  Eliza,  what  a  jewel  you  are!  You  always  just  anticipate  me.  Eva,  dar- 
ling, I  think  we  can  get  you  down  to  the  table  where  that  turkey  will  be  looking 
like  a  big  heathen  god,  and  we  will  forget  you  have  ever  been  away!  " 

And  as  they  all  sat  about  the  table  with  the  nuts  and  candy  when  the 
feast  was  over,  "  I  haven't  had  such  a  Thanksgiving,"  Mrs.  Penn  said,  "  since 
my  husband  died!  I  was  dead  and  I  am  alive  ;  I  was  lost  and  I  am  found.  I 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


375 


was  a  limp  and  useless  nonentity,  and  now  I  am  a  part  of  the  breathing  world, 
with  something  to  do,  with  people  to  love,  and  with  a  heart  full  of  thank- 
fulness." 

"  I  wish  we  had  Thanksgiving  twice  a  year,  don't  you,  grandmother  ?" 
piped  Amy. 

"  I  am  having  it  now  every  day  of  my  life,  my  little  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Penn. 
4'  I  am  having  a  perpetual  Thanksgiving!  " 


376  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


CHAPTER   FOURTEENTH. 


About  Pets. 

But  think  admitted  to  that  equal  sky, 
His  faithful  dog  shall  bear  him  company. 

— Pope. 
Like  a  dog  he  hunts  in  dreams. 

—  Tennyson. 
The  house  without  a  pet 

Is  a  sad  house,  you  know; 
There  all  the  trifles  fret. 
And  every  task  is  woe. 

— Anon. 

He  hailed  the  bird  in  Spanish  speech, 

The  bird  in  Spanish  speech  replied, 
Flapped  round  his  cage  with  joyous  screech, 

Dropped  down  and  died. 

— Campbell. 

Let  Hercules  himself  do  what  he  may, 

The  cat  will  mew  and  dog  will  have  his  day. 

— Shakespeare . 
A  harmless,  necessary  cat. 

—  Shake  spear  e. 

When  I  play  with  my  cat,  who  knows  if  I  do  not  make  her  more  sport  than  she  makes 
me  ? — Montaigne, 

A  hardy  mouse  that  is  bold  to  breede 
In  catte's  eeris. 

—  Chaucer. 

The  human  members  of  our  happy  household  cannot  flatter  themselves 
that  they  are  the  sole  constituents  of  the  family.  There  are  certain  other  mem- 
bers whose  affection  and  whose  intelligence  have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the 
happiness  of  the  house.  To  be  sure,  in  the  city  certain  pets  are  impossible;  it 
is  difficult,  for  example,  to  have  large  dogs  in  town  and  give  them  the  exercise 
needed  for  health.  But  when  one  is  willing  to  take  the  trouble  of  giving  them 
their  frequent  run,  how  much  they  add  to  our  amusement  and  the  liveliness  of 
the  family ! 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


377 


NOT  THE  SOLE  CONSTITUENTS  OF    THE  FAMILY. 

Poor  Dog  Tray. 

There  are  many  people  who  have  an  unreasonable  fear  of  dogs,  and  espe- 
cially so  in  the  season  known  as  dog-days.  These  days  of  sultry  and  humid 
summer  have  an  ill  repute  which  is  undeserved,  '•  Dog -day  weather"  is  a  final 
epithet  of  opprobrium  when  we  condemn  the  temperature.  Yet.  curiously 
enough,  the  dog-days  originally  received  their  name  as  a  matter  of  honor  and 


3?3  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

dignity.  The  long-headed  Egyptians,  observing  that  the  Nile  rose  annually 
with  the  heliacal  rising  of  a  certain  brilliant  star,  called  that  orb  of  beneficent 
influences  Sihor,  the  Nile.  And  as  its  coming  warned  them  to  their  terraces 
out  of  reach  of  the  flood  they  typified  it  as  a  dog,  or  a  man  with  a  dog's  head. 
The  Latins  adopted  the  star  as  Sirius,  but  forgot,  or  never  knew,  its  signifi- 
cance, while  ignorance,  mistaking  coincidence  for  cause,  ascribed  to  it  a  bale- 
ful increase  of  the  heat.  In  time  the  popular  belief  declared  that  on  its  rising 
wine  turned  sour,  dogs  went  mad,  all  other  animals  began  to  waste,  and  man 
to  decline.  The  Romans  even  sacrificed  a  brown  dog  to  appease  its  rage. 

Superstition  has  a  deep  root.  Macaulay's  school-boy  may  repeat  till  he  is 
hoarse  that  this  slandered  luminary  twinkles  at  the  reassuring  distance  of  two 
trillions  two  hundred  thousand  billions  of  miles  from  our  little  sphere,  while 
the  illustrative  cannon-ball,  traveling  four  hundred  and  eighty  miles  an  hour, 
must  consume  five  hundred  and  twenty-three  thousand  two  hundred  and 
eleven  years  in  the  journey  thither;  and  science  may  reiterate  that  rabies,  what- 
ever its  nature  or  origin,  is  not  exclusively  a  midsummer  madness;  every  year, 
notwithstanding,  panic  terror  concerning  hydrophobia  recurs,  and  walks  hand 
in  hand  with  wholesale  slaughter. 

Yet  the  patient,  faithful,  taciturn  creatures  thus  despitefully  entreated  have 
been  the  unselfish  friends  and  servants  of  man  since  the  dim  antiquity  wherein 
that  naked  savage  suddenly  bethought  himself  to  make  a  coat  of  his  compan- 
ion's skin.  Indeed,  your  dog  is  your  only  unquestioning  and  free-hearted 
lover.  Other  animals  return  a  vague  attachment  for  benefits  received.  Hu- 
manity rigidly  exacts  its  quid  pro  quo;  to  be  loved  of  his  kind,  one  must  be  lov- 
able. But  a  man's  dog  clings  to  him  through  ill  report  and  good  report — 
suffers,  starves,  dies  at  his  hands,  and  counts  itself  happy  in  the  oppor- 
tunity. 

Famous  Dogs. 

Did  not  Plato  the  Broad  swear  by  a  dog  ?  Did  not  the  dog  of  Alcibiades 
cost  seventy  minas — a  thousand  dollars  of  our  coinage  ?  was  he  not  even  more 
esteemed  for  his  sagacity  than  for  his  beauty  ?  and  did  not  his  fidelity  withstand 
the  coarse  caprices,  the  cruel  indignities,  of  that  brilliant  master  from  whom 
all  other  friends  fell  away  ?  Did  not  that  greater  general,  William  of  Orange, 
love  his  dog  as  well,  and  honor  him  much  more  ? 

Charles  the  Second,  who  cared  for  neither  man  nor  woman,  cherished  his 
dogs  with  a  fondness  bequeathed  to  him  possibly  by  his  grandmother,  Anne  of 
Denmark,  who  kept  a  retinue  of  those  followers,  and  paid  a  very  pretty  annual 
bill  to  Master  Heriot,  the  court  goldsmith,  for  their  gold  and  silver  collars  and 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  379 

emblazoned  blankets,  thereby  contributing,  no  doubt,  to  the  endowment  of  his 
famous  hospital.  It  was  that  royal  lady's  successor,  her  present  Majesty  of 
England,  who,  inheriting  the  family  taste,  presented  his  ugliness  of  Skye  to  an 
obsequious  court,  and  made  him  a  fashion. 

Who,  among  us,  being  examined  as  to  the  events  of  King  John's  evil  reign, 
could  remember  one  save  the  signing  of  the  Magna  Charta,  and  the  death  of 
Gelert,  the  hound  ?  What  a  dreary  waste  of  dates  and  bloodshed  is  the  history 
of  the  Crusades;  but  at  the  name  of  Roswal,  the  dog  of  Sir  Kenneth,  how  the 
hot  sands  of  Syria,  the  splendor  and  valor  of  the  legions,  the  fierce  courage  of 
Richard,  the  enlightened  chivalry  of  the  Sultan  Saladin,  the  aspirations,  the 
prejudices,  the  very  image  of  the  time,  rise  before  us  ! 

Barry,  the  famous  dog  of  great  St.  Bernard,  saved  forty  lives,  and  among 
others,  carried  on  his  back  to  the  hospice,  through  towering  snow-drift,  a  baby 
whose  mother  had  been  killed  by  an  avalanche.  If  he  stood  for  charity,  Aubry's 
dog  stood  for  justice,  when,  with  whatever  emphasis  might  lie  in  furious  threat- 
enings,  he  accused  Richard  of  Macaire  of  his  master's  murder. 


The  Dog  in  Literature. 

Literature  has  made  the  dog  her  own,  and  Art  has  loved  him.  Who  thinks 
of  Sir  Walter  without  Mai'da  ?  Is  not  Flush  beloved  by  Mrs.  Browning's 
lovers  ?  Can  we  separate  heroic  little  Miss  Mitford  from  her  faithful  spaniel  ? 
Is  not  Byron's  Boatswain  fitly  sepultured  at  Newstead  Abbey  ?  Who  can  read 
without  tears  that  perfect  story,  "  Rab  and  his  Friends  "  ?  Who  has  not  a  ten- 
der feeling  for  the  invisible,  beloved  Schneider  who  comforts  scapegrace  Rip 
Van  Winkle  in  his  distresses  ?  Who  has  not  known  and  loved  the  dogs  of  Land- 
seer  ?  How  many  tombs  of  the  old  knights  bear  a  sculptured  dog  to  show  that 
they  followed  their  standard  as  a  dog  his  master  ?  On  how  many  monuments 
of  illustrious  women  his  effigy  symbolized  fidelity  and  affection,  as  the  lion's 
image  symbolized  courage  and  magnanimity  !  What  innumerable  records  of 
fearlessness,  self-sacrifice,  patience,  sagacity,  devotion,  justify  that  good  say- 
ing of  Hamerton,  "  I  pity  the  man  who  can  live  a  dogless  life  !" 

It  is  true  that  in  the  cities  there  is  no  room  for  dogs.  They  must  be 
crowded  out,  with  some  other  good  gifts  of  heaven.  The  dog  is  a  natural 
rover.  He  loves  free  air,  free  ways,  the  smell  of  fresh  turf.  Shut  in  to  alien 
pavements,  scorched  by  the  sun,  pinched  by  the  winter  winds,  parched  with 
thirst,  faint  with  hunger,  the  race  deteriorates,  develops  strange  diseases,  and 
from  man's  safeguard  becomes  his  possible  danger. 

But  in  their  natural  home,  with  water,  shade,  and  kindness,  the  nobler 


38o 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


breeds  of  dogs,  which 
alone  should  be  perpetu- 
ated, are  no  more  dan- 
gerous in  August  than 
in  January,  which  is 
more  than  can  be  said 
of  man,  who  too  often 
develops  a  most  uncer- 
tain, not  to  say  fero- 
cious, temper  under 
these  brazen  skies.  Let 
us,  then,  be  reasonable. 
Banish  poor  Tray  to  the 
country,  watch  him  if 
need  be,  slay  him  if 
need  be,  but  let  us  not  indulge  in  excessive  apprehension  of  the  whole  canine 
species.  We  shall  have  gotten  a  step  farther  in  civilization  when  dog-days 
cease  to  be  an  indiscriminate  carnage  of  dogs  of  all  degree. 


Harmless  Necessary  Cat, 

And  if  there  is  so  much  to  be  said  for  the  dog,  who  appears  to  be  capable 
of  every  emotion  that  human  beings  show — love,  hatred,  jealousy,  fear,  anger, 
courage,  depression,  sorrow  and  joy,  patience  and  faithfulness  and  the  rest — 
shall  nothing  in  her  turn  be  pleaded  for  the  cat  ?  The  ubiquitous  cat,  found 
all  the  world  over,  and  all  the  world  over  always  the  same,  whose  lovers  claim 
for  her  an  almost  human  perfection,  and  who  everywhere,  on  sea  or  shore,  in 
the  parlor  or  in  the  hut,  makes  a  place  look  like,  home  !  And  yet  no  member 
of  the  family  has  suffered  the  abuse  that  the  family  cat  receives  at  the  hands 
of  the  world.  We  do  not  speak  of  those  who  starve  her-  who  turn  her  out- 
doors at  night,  who  go  away  for  a  season  in  the  country  and  leave  her  to  forage 
for  herself,  but  of  those  who  simply  slander  her  by  injurious  report.  Accord- 
ing to  these  scandalous  people  the  cat  is  without  beauty  and  without  affection; 
she  is  ungrateful,  cruel,  stupid,  treacherous,  and  dishonest.  Strange  that  on 
such  a  worse  than  worthless  being  should  be  lavished  the  religious  worship  of 
nations  and  so  much  of  the  household  love  of  uncounted  individuals  as  poor 
Pussy  has  received ! 

The  Cat's  Beauty. 

But  let  us  look  at  the  charges.  Without  beauty?  She  is  a  being  whose 
outlines  are  beauty  itself;  she  is  a  succession  of  supple  curves,  and  every  curve 


\ 

STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  381 

obeys  the  law  of  the  line  of  beauty,  and  all  that  beauty  is  heightened  by  the 
further  beauty  of  gloss  and  movement.  How  brilliant  are  those  eyes,  likeness 
to  which  gives  value  to  a  precious  jewel — the  cat's-eye  quartz,  that  otherwise 
were  a  worthless  pebble  !  She  is  clad  in  furs  shining  with  life,  and  which, 
while  upon  her,  are  incomparably  superior  to  those  dead  furs  which  a  princess 
is  proud  to  wear.  Every  motion  is  grace,  and  whether  she  is  black,  or  white, 
or  gray,  or  tortoise-shell,  every  tint  she  assumes  is  a  pure  and  charming 
one. 

Is  she  without  affection?  When  she  goes  to  meet  her  chosen  friends  in  the 
family  and  fawn  about  their  feet,  when  she  caresses  them  in  their  sickness,  and 
sometimes  dies  broken-hearted  in  their  death,  it  would  seem  to  manifest  love 
for  them.  When  she  suffers  little  children  to  lift  her  by  the  tail  and  carry  her 
round  by  the  heels,  dress  her  up  in  caps  and  aprons  as  a  doll,  and  inflict  upon 
her  a  thousand  well-meant  pains,  it  looks  as  though  she  loved  them.  There 
are  innumerable  instances  on  record  of  the  affection  of  cats  for  children,  and 
entirely  contradictory  of  the  outrageous  old  notion  of  their  sucking  the  breath 
of  babies. 

Puss,  indeed,  often  makes  her  nest  in  the  cradle,  but  not  because  she 
loves  the  little  milky  breath,  nor  because  she  loves  the  warmth,  but  because 
she  loves  the  baby.  She  has  been  known  to  fly  at  the  biggest  and  most  fero- 
cious dog  entering  the  room  where  her  little  friend  lay  sleeping,  to  jump  from 
the  cradle  when  the  child  cried  and  run  for  the  mother,  returning  and  standing 
with  her  fore-feet  on  the  cradle's  edge,  nervous  and  anxious  till  the  mother1 
took  up  the  child;  and  one  belonging  to  Mrs.  Wilson,  of  Cults,  near  Aberdeen, 
Scotland,  once  accosted  his  mistress  with  piteous  meaows,  running  repeatedly  to 
the  door,  and  endeavoring  to  fetch  her  with  him,  and  finally  succeeding,  when 
the  lady  found  her  sick  and  feeble  child  rolled  from  the  sofa  where  it  had  been 
left,  and  so  enveloped  in  the  rugs  and  wraps  that  it  would  presently  have  suf- 
focated if  help  had  not  been  brought  by  the  cat. 

When,  moreover,  the  cat  conquers  her  hereditary  attachment  to  places, 
and  follows  persons  about  in  their  peregrinations,  it  cannot  be  because  she 
loves  to  travel.  Dr.  Stables,  a  surgeon  of  the  British  navy,  tells  us  of  his 
cat  which,  although  at  six  years  old  the  mother,  of  a  hundred  kittens,  yet 
found  time  to  accompany  him  on  all  his  travels,  having  journeyed  over  twenty 
thousand  miles  in  his  company,  usually  bestowing  herself,  when  she  judged 
that  it  was  flitting-time,  in  the  little  basket  that  carried  her,  but  on  one  oc- 
casion, having  taken  so  long  an  airing  before  starting  that  her  master  was 
obliged  to  leave  without  her,  she  hailed  him,  as  he  walked  along  the  railway 
platform,  from  a  first-class  carriage  that  she  had  thought  it  best  to  take  to 
save  time. 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


The  Cat's  Virtues. 

But  when  people  say  that  Puss  is  cruel  they  forget  that  all  carnivorous  ani- 
mals, and  man  among  them,  are  cruel,  too.  Yet  Puss  is  sometimes  more  virtuous 
than  man  in  this  regard,  and  will  live  for  years  with  the  tempting  morsel  of  a 
bird  playing  about  her,  disputing  her  dinner,  and  alighting  on  her  very  head. 
Dr.  Good  told,  long  ago,  of  one  that  had  lived  at  peace  with  a  tame  canary, 
suddenly,  to  the  horror  of  the  family,  seizing  it  in  her  mouth,  and  springing  to 
the  top  of  a  tall  secretary,  whereupon  it  was  found  that  a  strange  cat  had  en- 
tered the  room,  which  authenticated  fact,  from  a 
scientific  authority,  must  be  held  to  dispose  of  the 
accusations  both  of  cruelty  and  of  stupidity  if  there 
were  not  other  instances  in  plenty  to  do  the  same. 
There  is  certainly  sagacity  in  the  way  any  cat  finds 
her  way  across  miles  of  country  to  an  old  home, 
in  the  way  she  often  sits  by  the  cow, 
and  asks  the  milkman  to  attend  to  her 
wants,  in  the  way  she  as  often  goes 
fishing;  it  was  sagacity  in  the 
cat  which  caught  the  escap- 
ing canary,  and  brought  it 
back  alive  to  her  mistress;  it 
was  sagacity  in  the  cat  that  ab- 
solutely baited  a  mouse-hole 
with  part  of  her  dinner,  and  sat 
and  watched  till  she  could 
pounce  upon  the  mouse; 
it  was  sagacity  in  the 
cat  that  knew  when 
Sunday  came,  *as  Mr. 
Whyte,  of  Dallfield 
Terrace,  Dundee,  re- 
lates ;  and  the  cats  that, 
threatened  with  condign 
punishment,  have  sud- 
denly disappeared  and 
never  re-appeared  are 
legion.  If  one  wants  a 
study  in  philosophy,  by 
CATS  ARE  A  PART  OF  THE  LARES  AND  PENATES.  the  way,  and  an  oppor- 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  383 

tunity  to  discriminate  between  instinct  and  reason,  he  has  only  to  observe  any 
young  cat  on  her  first  experience  of  a  mirror,  as  she  tries  to  put  her  paw  behind 
it,  pops  back  to  see  if  the  foe  is  still  there,  and  ends  by  boxing  the  ears  of  the 
impudent  creature  confronting  her  there,  and  scampers  away  with  her  tail 
as  big  as  ten,  profoundly  convinced  of  magic,  whether  or  not  she  knows  the 
word. 

As  for  the  treachery  and  dishonesty  of  Puss,  which  must  be  classed  under 
the, same  head,  that  charge  is  simply  libelous.  The  cat  is  naturally  a  hunter.  If 
you  take  her  away  from  her  hunting-field  and  expect  her  to  live  the  civilized  life 
of  the  parlor,  she  must  be  fed  regularly,  as  any  other  civilized  being  must  be.  The 
best  of  us,  King  David,  for  example,  when  famishing  or  when  simply  hungry, 
can  be  tempted  to  help  ourselves.  What  credit  to  this  little  dumb  creature,  then, 
that  she  does  not  do  it  oftener  !  The  cook  would  have  whipped  Puss  for  eat- 
ing some  of  the  oysters.  "  And  what  for,"  said  the  table  girl,  "  when  he  did 
the  dacent  thing  to  lave  any  ?  "  There  are  really  few  honester  persons  than  a 
well-trained  and  well-treated  cat.  She  is  often  the  trusted  guardian  of  prop- 
erty, as  any  grocer  who  keeps  his  pet  parading  on  the  counter  can  tell  you. 
Why  we  should  expect  those  little  furry  paws  to  keep  themselves  "  from  pick- 
ing and  stealing  "  any  more  than  our  own  fingers,  in  like  circumstances,  is  not 
to  be  explained  by  merely  calling  names. 


The  Cat  a  Fireside  Ornament. 

In  the  mean  time,  as  it  has  been  often  said,  there  is  about  every  cat  a  certain 
feminine  quality  that  makes  her  an  appropriate  "  property  "  of  the  hearth  ; 
she  loves  her  home  and  fireside,  where  she  welcomes  the  wanderer,  and  seems 
to  him  a  part  of  them  ;  she  is  gentle  in  her  movements,  and  graceful  as  a  court 
lady  with  a  well-regulated  train  ;  she  cheers  tired  and  dull  moods  with  her 
pretty  pranks,  and  sick  hours  with  a  watchful  solicitude,  always  glad  to  sit 
beside  your  pillow  when  allowed."  If  she  has  some  curiosity  in  her  composition  ; 
if  she  loves  a  gossip  with  a  neighbor;  if  she  values  praise,  and  brings  you  her 
first  captive  mouse  to  get  it;  if  she  has  a  little,  ever  so  little,  cunning — does 
not  all  that  furnish  further  resemblance  to  the  daughters  of  Eve  .'  And  when 
you  see  her  bring  up  her  kitten,  teach  it  its  manners,  and  box  its  ears  on  mis- 
behavior, does  she  do  anything  but  complete  the  parallel  ?  Certainly  cats  are 
to  every  household  where  they  are  loved  at  all  a  part  of  the  Lares  and  Penates, 
and  to  such  households  it  is  no  matter  of  marvel  that  the  Egyptians  deified  them 
and  laid  their  poor  little  carcasses  away  at  last  with  all  the  honor  given  to  the 
royal  mummy.  But  it  was  not  merely  as  the  friend  of  the  hearth  that  this  was 


384  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

done  ;  for  Egypt  was  the  land  of  grain,  and  the  enemy  of  rats  and  mice  pre- 
served it  from  incalculable  loss.  In  our  own  country,  where  it  can  hardly  be 
denied  that  such  vermin  cost  many  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  damage  yearly, 
the  cat  is  no  less  valuable  an  animal  than  she  was  in  ancient  Egypt,  and  if  she 
is  not  deified,  she  should  certainly  be  treated  with  indulgence  and  respect. 


The  Little  Egyptian  Cat. 

They  made  a  mummy  of  her,  I  say,  over  there  in  those  dark  old  days.    Did 
you  ever  hear  the  story  of  one  of  those  little  mummied  cats  ? 

"  I  was  a  little  Egyptian  cat, 
And  I  lived  in  King  Pharaoh's  house,  I  did, 
The  rats  and  the  mice  I  caught  with  delight, 
And  I  even  ate  birds,  which  I  know  was  not  right, 
And  instead  of  a  fence  I  would  sit  out  all  night 
And  meow  on  the  top  of  a  pyramid. 

One  day  I  was  greedy  and  ate  seven  mice, 
And  I  had  a  bad  fit,  and  I  died,  I  did. 
They  hurried  and  made  me  this  beautiful  case, 
Which  covers  me  all  excepting  my  face, 
And  they  laid  me  away  in  a  snug  little  place, 
On  a  shelf  inside  of  a  pyramid. 

And  there  I  have  lain  all  these  thousands  of  years, 
And  hoped  to  lie  buried  forever,  I  did. 
They  hunted  me  out  and  brought  me  away, 
And  now  isn't  it  awful  that  I  have  to  stay 
In  this  dusty  museum,  day  after  day, 
When  I  want  to  go  back  to  my  pyramid  ?  " 


The  Cat's  Usefulness. 

< 

And  if  there  were  no  more  to  say  in  the  praise  of  Puss  save  that  she  is  the 
destroyer  of  the  small  deer  that  infest  the  dwelling,  and  particularly  the  city 
dwelling,  it  would  have  to  be  acknowledged  that  she  is  a  blessing  past  valuing. 
For  although  there  are  countless  things  that  would  seem  to  have  been  set  on 
foot  merely  to  try  the  patience  of  the  housekeeper,  and  show  her  what  a  saint 
she  could  be  if  associated  kitchens,  and  reservoirs  of  heat,  and  all  the  kindred 
household  labor-saving  machinery  to  be  thought  of  were  applied  to  her  case, 
yet  there  are  none  of  all  her  vexations  that  exceed  in  trouble  that  given  by  ver- 
min in  the  walls  of  a  house,  and  no  vermin  in  diabolical  maliciousness  and 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  385 

intelligence  equals  the  nuisance  of  rats,  which,  for  excess  of  evil,  may  have 
been  banished  from  Eblis  itself. 

The  rat,  in  fact,  is  the  housekeeper's  worst  enemy.,  always  of  course  put- 
ting possibly  her  own  indolence  and  procrastination  out  of  the  question.  His 
boldness  is  only  equaled  by  his  cupidity,  his  cupidity  by  his  cunning,  his  cun- 
ning by  his  courage.  Her  larder  is  invaded  by  him  by  day,  her  sleeping-room 
by  night  ;  her  house  itself  is  eaten  up  and  reduced  to  sawdust  by  his  teethr  and 
her  only  satisfaction  in  contemplating  him  is  that  if  he  lives  long  enough,  the 
poor  creature,  those  teeth  will  grow  over  each  other  so  that  he  can  not  open  his 
mouth  to  gnaw.  She  builds  a  new  kitchen  when  he  has  riddled  the  old  one, 
very  likely,  but  she  would  have  to  line  her  closets  with  sheet-iron  to  keep  him 
out  of  them.  His  sharp  teeth  may  be  heard  filing  and  scraping  all  day  long  ; 
they  wake  her  out  of  sound  sleep  at  night,  and  as  she  hears  him  tumbling  round 
the  rafters  and  behind  the  wainscots,  she  cannot  tell  in  the  dark  if  it  be  he,  or 
tramps,  or  burglars,  or  fire,  and  he  injures  her  nerves  as  much  as  he  injures 
her  house  She  fears  to  leave  the  children  alone  in  their  beds  in  the 
evening,  fears  to  leave  the  sick,  and  knows  that  even  the  dead  are  not  safe  on 
their  biers.  She  dare  not  keep  arsenic  or  strychnine  in  the  house  lest  some 
one  else  get  it,  and  worse  trouble  than  that  of  rats  follow  ;  she  hates  to  buy 
it,  too,  lest  the  sudden  death  of  anybody  in  the  circle  of  her  acquaintance 
should  put  her  under  suspicion;  she  dreads  to  use  it  when  it  is  bought, 
lest  the  house  be  made  uninhabitable  by  the  last  vexation  which  the  creatures 
that  die  of  it  can  leave  her  to  endure.  Jf  she  lives  near  a  piece  of  water,  it  is 
not  only  her  house,  but  her  yard,  her  garden,  her  orchard,  that  are  infested, 
and  fairly  undermined  by  the  pitfalls  of  the  holes  they  dig  ;  the  roots  of  her 
apple  trees  are  devoured  ;  her  hens  are  pounced  upon  when  stupid  with  sleep  ; 
her  chickens  are  snatched  before  her  face  and  eyes  ;  her  eggs  are  carried  off 
warm  from  the  nest,  and  the  food  of  the  fowls  is  shared  by  the  bold  interlopers 
with  ruinous  robbery.  She  cannot  fight  them,  for  they  will  fly  at  her  throat  if 
attacked;  she  cannot  drown  them,  for  they  swim  like  bubbles;  she  cannot  catch 
them,  for  her  traps  are  as  good  as  laughed  at  by  the  wretches  that  figuratively 
snap  their  fingers  at  them — and  if  they  were  not,  of  what  use  would  they 
be  where  the  creatures  multiply  a  dozen  and  a  half  at  a  litter  *  If 
her  home  is  a  rural  one,  ferrets,  which  are  so  valuable  in  the  city,  are  not 
to  be  had;  she  remembers  the  old  Bishop  Hatto  who  was  eaten  in  his  tower, 
and  shudders  at  possibilities;  she  would  almost  forswear  her  country  for  the 
sake  of  living  across  the  sea  in  Aberdeenshire  or  Sutherlandshire,  where  a  rat 
cannot  be  induced  to  stay;  she  doubts  if  even  the  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin  could 
rid  her  of  the  pest  for  a  wilderness  of  guilders ;  she  wonders  if,  in  the  survival 
of  the  fittest,  this  strong,  inexterminable  brown  Norway  rat  is  not  destined  to 


386  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

destroy  the  human  race  and  take  the  earth  to  itself  ;  she  does  not  see  anything 
Btrange  in  the  circumstance  that  people  with  shattered  nerves,  whether  from 
delirium  or  other  cause,  see  such  things  as  rats — she  is  beginning  to  see  noth- 
ing else  in  the  universe  herself. 


The  Norway  Rat. 

He  is  an  intruder,  this  fierce  little  pest,  at  the  best,  and  belongs  to  a  con- 
quering army.  He  came  into  Europe  from  Asia,  he  came  to  England  from 
Norway,  he  comes  over  to  America  by  means  of  every  ship  that  touches  our 
ports;  he  has  destroyed  our  own  rat,  which,  bad  as  it  was,  seems  now  a  superior 
being  in  remembrance;  he  is  all  the  more  terrible  that  he  takes  care  of  his  old 
and  sick,  and  so  swells  his  number;  and  the  only  mercy  to  be  found  in  the  visi- 
tation is  that  he  frequently  eats  up  his  companions,  taking  care  to  turn  the  skin 
inside  out  with  a  nicety  to  the  very  toes. 

And  meantime  a  sort  of  nervous  horror  follows  the  neighborhood  of  these 
small  deer;  the  housekeeper  afflicted  by  them  knows  that  they  are  the  creatures 
of  uncanny  legend;  that  a  certain  awesome  mysticism  surrounds  them;  that 
they  have  unknown  intelligences  which  warn  them  when  a  house  is  going  to 
burn  down,  or  a  ship  to  sink,  in  full  season  to  desert  in  safety,  and  be  met 
marching  away  in  platoons;  that  of  old,  if  not  now,  they  were  wont  to  flee  be- 
fore rhyming  anathemas  addressed  to  them  vocally,  and  quit  the  place  where 
such  were  delivered,  and  instantly  obey  a  letter  written  to  them  and  sealed 
with  butter,  politely  requesting  their  departure ;  that,  in  fact,  every  rat  born  is 
possessed  of  a  little  demon  more  untamable  and  vindictive  than  the  armies  of 
demons  that  went  wherever  Cornelius  Agrippa  did.  She  reads  old  accounts  of 
the  various  methods  of  attempted  extermination,  and  laughs  bitterly  to  see 
how  they  have  failed;  she  turns  over  prints  of  Annibale  Caracci's  Rat-catcher 
of  Bologna,  of  Vischer's  Dutch  Rat-catcher,  of  the  Chinese  Rat-catcher  with  his 
cat  in  a  bag;  and  while  she  feels  that  she  could  take  them  all  to  her  bosom,  as 
dear  friends  with  one  common  purpose  in  life,  vould  they  only  rise  in  the  flesh 
and  come  to  her  rescue  now,  yet  they  only  serve  to  show  her  that  the  trouble 
is  universal  and  ineradicable  all  the  round  globe  over.  She  marvels  that  the 
inventive  genius  of  America  has  not  come  to  her  help,  and  she  will  regard  the 
man  who  finds  out  and  makes  known  some  way  of  setting  her  free  from  the 
ravages  of  the  rat  as  greater  than  he  who  invents  electric  lights  and  telephones, 
or  he  that  taketh  a  city. 

The  Bird  in  the  Cage. 

Nor  is  it  impossible,  as  some  have  thought,  to  keep  a  bird  where  there  is  a 
•  cat;  for,  as  we  have  just  seen,  there  are  some  cases  where  the  cat  is  the  bird's 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  387 

best  friend.  Always  does  that  house  seem  delightful  to  me  where,  on  the  open- 
ing of  the  door,  there  comes  a  distant  gush  of  bird-song.  And  those  who  have 
canaries  and  finches  and  mocking-birds  and  love-birds  will  assure  us  that  the 
birds  are  their  intimate  friends.  Surely  that  is  so  with  that  almost  superhuman 
creature,  the  parrot.  I  myself  have  never  been  able  to  discover  either  common 
logic  or  common  sense  or  common  feeling  in  the  old-fashioned  fleer  upon  the 
love  of  the  spinster  for  her  cat  and  her  parrot.  If  women  condemned  to  soli- 
tary lives,  denied  the  love  of  husbands,  the  caresses  of  children,  the  companion- 
ship and  the  protection,  both  for  the  present  and  the  future,  that  family  life 
affords — if  such  women  can  find  in  the  love  of  cat  or  dog  or  parrot  or  any  other 
pet  any  solace  or  compensation,  however  small,  for  the  loss  of  the  blessings 
that  are  the  privilege  of  their  sisters,  what  is  there  ridiculous  about  it  or  worthy 
of  the  least  notice  or  mention?  People  must  love  and  be  loved  by  something; 
pity  them  if  they  have  nothing  better.  Only  vulgar  observation  and  a  low 
order  of  wit  could  have  originated  the  idea  that  there  was  anything  absurd  in 
the  business  rather  than  something  really  touching  and  pathetic.  The  purse 
may  not  be  sufficient  for  the  adoption  of  children,  the  reason  may  not  be  con- 
vinced of  the  wisdom  of  bringing  up  the  inheritor  of  unknown  traits  to  break 
one's  heart  at  last ;  but  the  bird  and  the  cat  are  within  the  means  of  the  poorest, 
and  offer  no  suggestion  of  folly  to  the  wisest. 


Pretty  Poll. 

But  although  spinsters  are  beginning  in  this  country,  as  they  have  long 
done  in  England,  to  hold  a  position  of  much  more  consideration  than  they  used 
to  do,  it  is  perhaps  still  fortunate  for  them  in  this  matter  that  there  is  a  fashion 
in  pets,  a  fashion  by  whose  revolution  certain  others  are  banished,  and  the  little 
marmoset  and  the  larger  monkey  are  brought  into  the  drawing-room,  and 
which  makes  paroquet  and  lory,  long  relegated  to  the  spinster  or  the  sailor 
boarding-house,  now  held  as  a  charming  addition  to  the  picturesqueness  of  the 
modern  parlor — the  poor  parrots  that  used  to  take  from  the  original  proprietor 
a  goodly  share  of  respect  for  daring  to  love  anything  not  human  and  a  man. 

But  how  is  it  possible,  fashion  or  not,  for  anybody  to  find,  among  all  pets, 
one  more  interesting  than  the  various  individuals  of  the  parrot  tribe  ?  Cer- 
tainly as  a  pleasure  to  the  eye  they  are  remarkable — the  comely  shape,  the 
wondrous  colors,  the  fine  poses,  the  beauty  of  expanded  wings  and  tail. 
Every  poet,  every  painter,  one  would  think,  might  value  this  beauty,  and  find 
advantage  in  its  companionship,  whether  it  is  exhibited  in  the  little  green  love- 
birds, sleeping  head  down,  who  have  nothing  to  say  to  any  but  each  other,  .or 
in  the  Australian  grass-paroquet,  whose  song  is  as  sweet  as  the  voice  of  the  huge 


388  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

red  and  blue  macaw,  who  measures  a  yard  from  crown  to  tail,  and  who  lives  all 
his  life  with  one  mate  only,  is  strident,  or  whether  it  is  seen  in  the  great  gray 
parrot,  with  his  scarlet  tail  like  a  burning  ember,  who  talks  like  a  familiar  for  a 
hundred  years,  or  in  the  purple-capped  lory,  who,  unlike  his  lory  cousins  that  can 
pronounce  only  the  name  of  lory,  adds  language  to  docility  and  both  to  the 
charm  of  a  scarlet  and  gold  body,  green  wing  passing  into  violet,  a  purple  plume 
on  his  head,  and  an  orange  bill,  or  in  the  common,  chattering,  friendly,  festive 
parrot  of  the  Amazon,  with  all  his  bravery  of  green  and  gold  and  vermilion, 
or  any  other  one  of  all  the  countless  specimens  that  find  their  way  to  our  shores 
and  doors. 

There  is  something  picturesque  in  the  very  thought  of  the  way  the  pretty 
creature  does  come  to  us,  those  that  we  see  being  seldom  bred  in  captivity, 
but  made  prisoners  when  ravaging  semi-tropical  harvest  fields,  or  swinging 
from  bough  to  bough  of  the  forests  that  lift  their  rank  growth  just  under  the 
equator.  Some  old  Jack  Tar,  ashore  on  his  holiday,  captured  it,  or  some  negro 
or  Indian  child  brought  it  down  to  the  strand  and  the  ships  to  sell,  and  it  has 
been  the  pet  of  Jack  over  all  the  long  lonesome  seas  between  his  port  and  its 
home,  and  has  learned  far  more  than  it  will  ever  tell,  for  all  its  talking.  As  it 
sits  chained  to  its  perch,  what  memories  it  has,  and  what  strange  hints  it  gives 
of  groves  with  their  gums  and  spices  in  distant  archipelagoes  glittering  in  the 
morning  sun  !  Those  weird  eyes  have  seen  Canopus  and  the  Southern  Cross ; 
that  black  tongue  guards  the  secret  of  night  in  the  forecastle,  and  all  with  a 
grim  uncanniness  as  if  it  were  leagued  with  dark  powers ;  and  when  it  speaks, 
and  when  it  bursts  into  peals  of  clattering  laughter,  it  seems  no  less  than  the 
witch  of  Endor  herself  in  disguise,  or  makes  us  believe  in  all  the  enchant- 
ments of  the  Arabian  Nights.  No  one  possessing  a  parrot  can  really  be  quite 
destitute  of  imagination,  so  much  does  it  force  upon  any  with  the  most  meagre 
outfit  in  this  regard  thoughts  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  customary  existence; 
the  Black  Prince  of  the  Fairy  Isles,  one-half  of  whom  was  marble,  is  no  longer 
a  marvel  and  an  impossibility;  here  is  some  cunning  and  articulate  being  who 
thinks  our  thoughts  and  talks  our  tongue,  the  whole  of  whom  is  feathers. 


The  Children  and  the  Parrot. 

And  what  a  benefactor  to  a  community  is  she  who  keeps  a  parrot,  and  is 
not  niggardly  with  it,  providing  she  Las  the  sheltering  cage  cloth  to  envelop  it 
for  the  benefit  of  neighbors,  whenever  he  remembers  its  wild  life  of  the  woods 
and  attempts  its  field  cries.  As  far  as  the  school  children  are  concerned  she  is 
the  one  person  in  the  village;  it  is  about  her  garden  and  her  window  that  they 
flock,  and  only  a  hand  organ  and  a  monkey  are  capable  of  rivaling  it,  and  they 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  389 

not  for  long  if  Polly,  stimulated  by  music,  lifts  her  own  voice  and  reclaims  their 
allegiance. 

She  fills  the  gaps  in  conversation,  too,  does  Polly,  sometimes,  as  well  as 
the  shortcomings  of  Bridget,  or  the  existence  of  the  weather,  entertains  the 
uproarious  baby  brought  on  a  visit,  or  scares  him  into  quiet,  keeps  the  cat  out 
of  mischief  with  her  warning  voice,  frightens  off  house-breakers  and  tramps 
and  book  agents,  and  is  a  live  and  seemingly  intelligent  companion.  And  if  it 
is  but  the  simulacrum  of  a  companion,  somehow  it  is  such  a  cunning  simula- 
crum, helped  by  the  unknown  agencies  that  always  seem  to  make  its  speech  fo 
pat  and  apropos,  that,  in  a  growing  attachment,  one  never  finds  it  out.  Poor 
pretty  Poll  brings  to  us  in  our  plain  lives  of  the  temperate  zone  all  the  richness 
of  the  tropics,  although  she  is  cousin  to  the  great  snowy  owl  of  the  arctic  re- 
gions; and  while  that  ominous  bird  and  all  its  congeners  are  associated  in  our 
minds  with  scenes  of  desolation,  of  deserts  and  ruins  and  empty  church  towers, 
where  the  fallen  bells  no  longer  lay  the  ghosts  of  the  churchyard,  this  bird 
seems  hardly  less  than  a  patron  bird  of  home  and  the  home-staying  spinster. 


Famous  Parrots. 

Nor  is  the  parrot  a  thing  to  be  despised  for  any  such  superficial  reason  as 
that  it  has  kept  company  with  Jack  Tar,  and  knows  the  dialect  of  the  sailor  board- 
ing-house, and  sometimes  swears  in  Spanish.  Alexander  the  Great  himself 
brought  one  into  Greece;  undoubtedly  that  parrot  was  acquainted  with  both  Hin- 
dostanee  and  Greek,  if  he  did  not  pick  up  a  Persian  phrase  or  two.  Ovid  wrote 
an  ode  on  the  death  of  one  belonging  to  Corinne,  and  of  course  that  parrot  spoke 
Latin.  Those  birds  outweigh  the  forecastle.  And  both  Aristotle  and  Pliny 
condescended  to  make  themselves  acquainted  with  the  Southern  stranger,  and 
to  observe  and  describe  its  habits.  And  we  doubt  if  in  their  day  there  was  so 
little  superstition  that  even  their  great  minds  were  exempt  from  a  touch  of  awe 
in  dealing  with  this  bird  so  far  the  superior  of  its  remote  cousin  and  counter- 
part, that  bird  sacred  to  the  great  spinster  of  all,  Pallas  Athene. 

Birds  in  general,  it  is  true,  belong  more  to  the  city  house  than  to  the  coun- 
try one,  since  all  about  the  latter  birds  sing  on  every  bough.  But  in  the 
country  there  is  another  member  of  the  family,  so  to  say,  which  is  one  of  great 
importance,  and  an  immense  help  in  every  way. 


A    Kerry  Cow. 

It  is  a  little  remarkable  that  so  many  families  in  our  large  country  towns 
and  their  surrounding  regions  have  not  more  universally  imitated  the  exampls 


39o  ^         STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

of  the  poor  emigrant,  who  on  the  moment  that  he  lands  looks  about  him  and 
proceeds  to  get  his  potato  patch  and  his  cow  into  action.  Of  course  in. cities 
and  their  immediate  neighborhood  such  a  thing  is  impracticable  if  not  impossi- 
ble ;  but  in  towns  built  like  the  most,  loosely  and  over  large  territory,  and  where 
almost  every  house  has  its  bit  of  land  about  it  or  behind  it,  a  dead  waste  takes 
place,  and  a  great  help  is  thrown  away  in  failing  to  procure  "  the  little  cow," 
as  the  affectionate  Irishman  is  wont  to  call  this  generous  provider.  And  this 
was  never  more  worthy  of  consideration  than  at  the  present,  when,  for  some 
fortunate  reason,  the  price  of  a  cow  is  wonderfully  moderate,  and  a  good  one 
can  be  procured  without  trouble  for  a  small  sum.  A  couple  of  acres  of  land 
will  comfortably  pasture  the  creature,  once  in  possession,  through  all  the  sum- 
mer months;  or,  if  one  has  not  the  land,  a  small  sum  of  money  will  pay  for  the 
pasturage  elsewhere,  and  the  winter  feed  is  less  than  three  tons  of  bay  with  a 
few  bushels  of  meal.  The  work  of  taking  care  of  her  is  so  light  that  no  man 
in  any  family  of  moderate  circumstances  needs  to  grumble  if  called  upon  to  do 
it;  but  as  he  very  probably  will  grumble,  it  is  a  blessing  to  know  that  a  small 
boy,  in  consideration  of  fifty  cents  a  week,  and  often  for  a  quart  of  the  day's 
milking,  may  be  had,  in  the  greater  number  of  towns,  able  and  willing  to  do  ail 
the  service  that  the  Dame  of  the  Crumpled  Horn  usually  requires. 

As  this  is  a  subject  which  comes  home  directly  to  the  housekeeper,  we 
shall  be  pardoned  if  we  dwell  upon  it  a  moment.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  out- 
lay is  not  large  which  procures  and  maintains  this  household  comfort;  and  what 
a  comfort  it  is  it  will  not  take  long  either  for  the  purse-holder  or  for  the  mother 
of  children,  or  for  the  cook  distracted  over  her  desserts,  to  discover. 

Wherever  there  is  a  cow  giving  the  usual  quantity  of  milk,  there  need 
never  be  actual  hunger;  it  supplies  a  score  of  deficiencies;  and  even  where 
hunger  is-not  in  question,  the  bills  of  the  butcher  and  grocer  are  very  sensibly 
and  healthily  diminished  by  large  rations  of  milk  served  to  those  that  can  drink 
it,  which  even  the  most  delicate  and  dyspeptic  can  do  with  the  tasteless  addition 
of  a  little  lime-water,  especially  if  they  remember  the  favorable  action  of 
" milk-cures"  in  many  cases,  which  probably  means  nothing  more  than  cure 
by  means  of  a  nourishing  food  easily  assimilated,  as  other  food  may  not  be. 


Advantages  of  the  Cow. 

Very  few  families  feel  themselves  able  to  contract  and  pay  large  milk 
bills,  and  they  are  apt  to  go  without  more  than  just  enough  for  tea  and  coffee, 
or  perhaps  the  exact  needs  of  the  baby.  But  when  the  milk  is  in  the  pans  and 
they  are  not  feeling  the  cost  of  it,  they  find  its  advantage  not  only  in  the  pleas- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  391 

ure  and  comfort  of  bountiful  draughts,  but  in  the  thousand  and  one  varying 
dishes  which  it  makes  possible,  and  which  were  previously  reckoned  as  too 
expensive  for  daily  use.  Thus  in  the  more  generous  table  made  possible  the 
well-being  of  the  family  is  increased,  as  enriching  and  blood -producing  diet 
cannot  help  doing. 

What  a  comfort  it  is  to  the  housekeeper  to  have  her  pans  of  milk  ready  to 
surrender  their  rich  skins  of  cream,  only  those  can  tell  who  have  been  suddenly 
taken  unawares  by  "  company  "  without  a  satisfactory  dessert  on  hand,  or  who 
are  at  a  loss  for  something  just  a  degree  nicer  than  common  for  breakfast ;  since 
this  cream  is  capable  of  being  whipped  and  poured  into  a  countless  number  of 
hurried  forms,  each  more  palatable  than  the  other,  and  is  delicious  poured  plain 
and  untutored  over  the  simple  breakfast  cake,  while  served  with  a  common 
apple  pie,  or  with  even  a  dish  of  boiled  oatmeal,  or  with  old-fashioned  "  pre- 
serves," it  gives  a  delicacy  and  daintiness  that  deceive  one  into  thinking  the  des- 
sert of  the  finest.  Meanwhile  there  is  left  the  "skimmed  milk,"  for  which  the 
cook  has  endless  uses,  for  which  the  poor  are  only  too  thankful,  and  on  which, 
if  one  has  a  little  pig  as  well  as  a  "little  cow'1 — although  that  I  never  will 
advise — the  pig  can  be  fattened  royally.  The  good  house-mother  also  may  find 
that  the  men  of  her  family  who  have  a  plenty  of  rich  milk  to  drink  will  not  seek 
anything  much  stronger  or  more  huitful,  and  it  will  always  be  a  help  to  her 
larder,  and  a  balm  to  the  feeling  that  hates  to  dismiss  a  "  tramp  "  without  food, 
lest  it  should  be  the  traditional  "  angel  unawares, "  if  there  is  a  big  bowl  of  milk 
to  be  handed  out  to  him. 

I  do  not  mention  at  length  the  ineffable  comfort,  saving,  and  satisfaction 
of  having  one's  own  butter  at  command,  for  one  can  not  do  everything  with 
one  cow;  and  remembering  the  vulgar  but  veracious  adage  that  one  can  not 
have  one's  cake  and  eat  it,  too,  we  understand  that  we  can  not  use  our  cream 
and  still  have  butter.  There  is,  nevertheless,  now  and  then  some  one  cow 
which  deserves  fame,  which  gives  a  family  all  the  milk  they  can  drink,  all  the 
cream  they  can  use,  and  furnishes  enough  cream  besides  for  a  good  quantity  of 
butter;  and  if  I  myself  have  never  met  with  her,  yet  her  report  has  reached 
me.  But  they  that  have  ever  realized  the  charm  of  "gilt-edged"  butter, 
which  once  tasted  makes  those  who  used  to  spread  the  thinnest  possible  skin  of 
butter  on  their  bread,  afterward  eat  as  much  butter  as  they  do  bread,  will 
realize  a  still  greater  charm  when  the  butter  is  of  their  own  production,  and  will 
be  willing  either  to  keep  an  extra  cow,  or  to  be  sparing  in  the  use  of  the  cream 
of  the  one  cow,  for  the  sake  of  having  that  luxury  all  their  own,  and  will  think 
nothing  of  the  care  that  the  necessity  for  purity  and  cleanliness  occasions, 
which,  after  all,  when  the  routine  has  become  established,  is  hardly  a  noticeable 
addition  to  the  house  work.  Nobody  knows  but  those  that  have  experienced  it 


392  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

the  pleasure  and  pride  to  bz  had  in  the  giving,  to  less  rortunate  friends  and 
neighbors,  of  little  pats  of  dewy  golden  butter  made  and  stamped  by  one's  own 
hand,  looking  as  if  the  cow  that  produced  that  butter  were  fed  only  in  heavenly 
pastures. 

To  crown  the  whole,  the  pleasure  to  be  gained  in  the  love  and  admiration 
of  the  cow  that  adds  all  this  comfort  to  our  household  arrangements  is  some- 
thing more  than  money  usually  can  procure  for  us — those  sleek  sides,  those 
great  moon  eyes,  those  gentle  ways,  are  almost  as  good  in  the  yard  as  the  daily 
sight  of  a  Cuyp  would  be  in  the  parlor;  and  there  is  something  very  humanizing 
in  the  presence  and  possession  of  the  pretty  creature.  One  grows  constantly 
more  and  more  attached  to  her;  and  we  have  seen  the  little  half-bred  Jersey, 
bought  when  a  calf  for  ten  dollars,  increase  her  values  in  her  owner's  estima- 
tion at  such  gigantic  rates,  as  month  by  month  went  by  and  that  owner  reveled 
in  the  luxury  of  boasting  of  her  points  and  her  beauty,  that  there  was  appar- 
ently not  money  enough  in  the  world  to  buy  her. 


Pegasus. 

And  if  one  has  a  cow  why  should  one  not  have  another  friend,  especially  a 
friend  to  the  women  of  the  family,  saving  them  fatigue  and  throwing  the  world 
open  to  them,  and  making  it  a  world  of  pleasure  ?  Once  in  a  while,  and  more 
often  now  than  of  old,  we  meet  with  women  who  really  seem  to  have  escaped 
from  bond  and  thrall,  in  so  much  as  they  can  drive  a  horse.  Not  only  that, 
but  they  can  harness  him.  And  not  only  that,  but,  if  put  to  the  pinch,  they 
can  take  the  entire  care  of  him,  and  not  handle  him  at  arm's  length,  either, 
but  familiarly  and  easily  as  if  he  were  a  kitten,  without  constant  remembrance 
that  he  has  teeth  for  the  sole  purpose  of  biting  them,  and  heels  made  for  noth- 
ing else  but  kicking.  There  is  a  capable  woman.  She  is  independent  of  man. 
She  waits  on  no  one's  pleasure.  She  begs  and  cringes,  and  is  servilely  polite 
for  the  sake  of  a  favor  to  none.  If  there  is  no  man  handy,  no  man  who  can 
leave  his  work  for  her  uses  conveniently,  she  goes  and  does  the  thing  herself, 
claps  on  the  harness  and  claps  in  the  horse,  and  is  off  about  her  business  or  her 
amusement  with  no  one  to  say  her  nay.  That  which,  by  submitting  to  the 
trouble  of  subduing  and  training  her  natural  timidity,  she  has  gained,  is  some- 
thing really  almost  inestimable  in  the  comfort  that  the  nag  affords  her,  the  excur- 
sions within  her  choice,  the  freedom  and  the  variety  brought  into  her  daily  life. 
When  left  alone  in  the  vehicle,  no  horse  looks  round  in  the  woman's  face,  and 
remarking  to  himself,  apparently,  that  "  it  is  only  she,"  proceeds  to  tangle  the 
reins,  and  snarl  the  traces,  and  get  the  breeching  where  the  collar  ought  to  be, 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  393. 

or  other  antics  as  generally  impossible ,  no  horse  starts  off  lame  with  her  in 
hopes  of  loafing  all  the  way;  no  horse  dares  to  make  the  motion  of  taking  the 
bit  between  his  teeth  if  she  holds  the  reins — he  knows  she  has  the  bit  between 
hers.  That  woman  has,  in  fact,  the  freedom  of  the  continent,  of  the  round 
earth,  one  might  say,  when  Behring  Straits  are  frozen  over  so  that  she  can 
drive  across,  for  nothing  but  death  and  a  lack  of  oats  can  interfere  between  her 
and  any  hostelry  at  which  she  chooses  to  put  up. 


The  Woman  Who  Used  to  Drive. 

Although  there  are  more  of  this  order  of  women  in  the  world  than  one 
would  think,  yet  among  the  whole  multitude  of  married  and  single  they  are  but 
few.  To  see  the  ordinary  woman  drive  is  to  assist  at  an  experiment  in  torture; 
the  arms  jerk  in  and  out  with  as  steady  a  motion  as  the  fall  of  the  animal's  foot; 
first  one  rein  pulls  and  then  another;  a  tender  mouth  in  any  beast  is  ruined;  a 
comfortable  action  is  so  broken  that  the  good  horse  acquires  more  gaits,  as 
some  one  has  said,  than  the  'city  of  Thebes  itself,  and  the  driver,  sitting  far 
forward,  with  a  terrible  eagerness  in  her  eye,  especially  if  another  team  is  com- 
ing, if  there  is  a  hill  to  descend,  or  if  there  is  any  likelihood  of  being  obliged  to 
turn  about,  looms  on  the  sight  like  the  vision  the  poet  saw 

"Most  awfully  intent, 
The  driver  of  those  steeds  is  forward  bent, 
And  seems  to  listen 

to  the  voice  of  fate  itself,  it  may  be,  prophesying  overthrow  and  death  if  the 
wheels  deviate  one  line  from  the  straight  one,  while  ever  and  anon  a  fearful 
phantom  looks  over  her  shoulder  of  that  horse  down,  and  she  herself  sitting  on 
his  poor  head,  and  the  shuddering,  heaving  bulk  suddenly  at  last  shaking  her 
off,  and  rising  over  her,  a  night-mare,  if  it  were  not  in  the  day.  To  the  appre- 
hension of  these  women  the  horse  partakes  somewhat  of  the  awe-inspiring 
quality  of  him  with  whom  they  are  most  associated ;  a  portion  of  the  power  and 
authority  of  man  himself  surrounds  him ;  he  is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of  Centaur ;  they 
endow  him,  in  the  mind's  eye,  with  an  intelligence  and  with  a  commanding 
spirit  that  might  belong  to  some  mysterioushippogriff,  and  they  feel  when  they 
hold  the  reins  that  the  creature  obeys  as  if  they  had  not  anything  half  so  gentle 
as  Pegasus  in  harness,  but  the  horse  of  Achilles,  or  the  steeds  that  Phaeton 
failed  to  drive.  To  them  every  horse  is  the  superb  and  appalling  creature  that 
Job  describes,  whose  neck  is  clothed  with  thunder;  and  in  reality  that  extra 
strength  and  power  of  the  beast, -which  he  never  uses,  and  of  which  he  is  uncon- 
scious, is  the  thing  that  they  always  expect  to  assert  itself. 


394 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


The  Woman  Who  Drives  Now. 


Bat  the  woman  to  whom  a  horse  is  but  a  beast  of  burden,  an  intelligence 
entirely  subject  to  her  own,  a  thing  to  be  well  treated,  a  servant  to  be  consid- 
ered, the  possessor  of  no  mysterious  attributes  or  of  no  malevolent  inspiration, 
but  to  be  saddled  and  bridled  without  any  more  concern  than  one  has  in  mak- 
ing a  bed — that  woman  has  made  life  infinitely  more  convenient  and  comforta- 
ble than  it  was  before,  has  created  for  herself  and  her  companions  a  thousand 
independent  pleasures,  has  enlarged  her  sphere  almost  as  much  as  wings  could 
do  it,  and  is  mistress  of  the  situation  in  two-thirds  of  those  cases  where  other 
women  are  "in  the  hands  of  their  friends." 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  395 


CHAPTER  FIFTEENTH. 


The  Household  Conduct. 

Begone,  dull  care  '.  I  prithee  begone  from  me, 
Begone,  dull  care!  Thou  and  1  shall  never  agree! 

-Play/ or  it. 

She  who  ne'er  answers  till  a  husband  cools. 
Or  if  she  rules  him,  never  shows  she  rules. 

— Pope. 

It  is  better  to  dwell  in  the  corner  of  a  housetop  than  with  a  brawling  woman  in  a  wide 
house.  — Proverbs. 

She  looketh  well  to  the  ways  of  her  household,  and  eateth  not  the  bread  of  idleness. 

— Proverbs. 
And  here's  to  the  housewife  that's  thrifty. 

—A'.  B.  Sheridan. 

From  care  I'm  free! 
Why  aren't  they  all  contented  like  me? 

La  Bayadere. 

Economy  is  the  fuel  of  magnificence. 

—  Emerson. 

The  primal  duties  shine  aloft,  like  stars, 

The  charities,  that  soothe,  and  heal,  and  bless. 

Are  scattered  at  the  feet  of  man  like  flowers. 

—  Wordsworth. 

And  where  Care  lodges  Sleep  will  never  lie. 

— Shakespeare. 

You  have  too  much  respect  upon  the  world ; 
They  lose  it  that  do  buy  it  with  much  care. 

— Shakespeare. 
The  cares  that  infest  the  day 

Shall  fold  their  tents  like  the  Arabs, 
And  as  silently  steal  away. 

— Longfellow. 
Care  will  kill  a  cat. 
And  therefore  let's  be  merry. 

If  we  would  have  perfect  happiness  in  our  house,  one  of  the  first  things 
we  will  do  is  to  arrive  at  a  perfect  understanding  as  husband  and  wife. 
There  are  two  statements  very  frequently  used  concerning  the  married  life 


396  STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  • 

which  must  always  be  peculiarly  offensive  to  those  who  desire  the  good  of  the 
family  as  an  institution  of  beneficence,  and  through  that  of  the  good  of  the 
race.  One  of  these  statements  implies  that  it  is  given  to  the  husband  to  rule ; 
the  other  implies  that  without  seeming  to  have  her  own  way,  the  wife  quietly 
manages  the  husband  and  has  it. 

Both  of  these  ideas  are  as  absurd  and  injudicious  as  they  are  harmful. 


The  Ideal  Household. 

In  the  ideal  household — and  every  household  should  at  least  strive  for  the 
ideal,  however  unhappily  it  falls  short  of  the  standard  before  it — there  is  no 
such  word  as  rule.  Marriage  is  not  a  bondage.  It  is  a  contract,  a  partner- 
ship, an  association,  a  union ;  and  without  speaking  of  it  in  relation  to  the 
decrees  of  the  Church,  to  all  those  that  enter  it  reverently  it  is  a  sacramen^. 
The  idea  either  of  reign  or  of  submission  in  such  case  is  impossible.  The 
partners  are  equal,  and  each  has  a  separate  course  to  pursue  toward  one  end. 
Because  the  husband  earns  or  possesses  the  means  necessary  for  the  family's 
subsistence  he  does  net  therefore  inherently  have  any  more  right  than  the 
wife  has  to  be  the  absolute  owner  and  ruler  of  the  house.  When  with  the  sol- 
emnity of  an  oath,  and  with  the  supposition  that  it  was  an  oath,  he  said,  "With 
all  my  worldly  goods  I  thee  endow,"  it  could  only  have  meant  that  from  that 
moment  the  worldly  goods  alluded  to  were  as  much  hers  as  his. 

Being  as  much  hers  as  his,  morally  at  least,  there  is  exactly  as  much  au- 
thority vested  in  her  by  reason  of  ownership  as  in  him,  and  he  can  claim  no 
right  at  all  to  govern  because  he  earns  or  owns  the  money.  Moreover,  the 
wife  is  supposed  to  be  doing,  and  should  be  doing  exactly  as  much  in  her 
paths  of  duty  for  the  benefit  of  the  household  of  which  her  husband  makes 
one  as  the  husband  does;  her  services  are  worth — if  a  money  value  could  be 
put  upon  them — as  much  as  his,  and  so  the  matter  is  equal  between  them. 


Managing  and  Ruling. 

The  only  legitimate  way  for .  the  husband  to  rule,  if  he  cherishes  the 
ignoble  wish  to  rule,  is  to  show  his  superiority  to  such  degree  and  extent  that 
the  wife  must  needs  admiringly  see  and  confess  that  his  opinion,  his  wish,  his 
determination,  is  the  best,  and  gladly  advocate  it  with  him,  and  follow  its 
direction.  But  to  say  that  the  wife  must  give  up  her  own  cherished  opinions 
and  life-long  preconceptions  and  plan  of  action  is  to  say  that  she  must  be 
reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  slave,  entirely  unfit  to  be  the  mother  of  children 
or  the  guardian  of  their  morals,  manner,  and  health — the  guardian  that  it  is 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  397 

everywhere  understood  she  has  to  be ;  it  is  to  reduce  her  to  a  subordinate 
condition,  the  result  of  which  is  as  injurious  to  her  husband  and  to  his  chil- 
dren as  it  is  to  herself. 

The  husband  who  chooses  to  make  the  effort  will  find  that  when  he  ac- 
cords to  his  wife  full  acknowledgment  of  her  individuality,  and  accustoms  her 
through  all  the  routine  of  married  life  to  the  same  gracious  courtesy  he  used 
to  practice  at  an  earlier  day,  he  will  have  a  fearless  companion  by  his  side,  a 
woman  of  reflection  and  judgment,  who,  having  a  sense  of  responsibility  and 
accountability  to  herself,  always  the  sternest  of  judges,  is  an  actual  helpmeet, 
a  possible  champion,  a  charming  friend,  a  reasonable  assistant,  a  woman  with 
some  other  entertainment  in  her  than  the  reflection  of  his  own  accustomed 
thoughts,  with  some  novelty  and  interest;  and  so  he  will  find  his  marriage  a 
far  finer  thing  than  if  he  had  always  a  sweet  and  tiresome  little  slave  at  com- 
mand. He  will  find  his  own  position,  too,  a  something  loftier  one,  for  he  will 
be  the  protector  and  .shield  and  support  of  one  of  a  nobler  order  than  weak- 
lings, and  he  gains  even  in  his  own  esteem  by  the  assumption  of  that  loftier 
character. 

Tyranny  and  Its  Result  in  Cunning. 

But,  again,  as  detestable  as  tyranny  is  cunning;  and  it  is  the  invariable 
and  necessary  accompaniment  of  tyranny.  People,  be  they  men  or  women, 
wives,  or  children,  or  servants — nay,  even  husbands — if  they  cannot  have 
their  own  way  by  fair  means,  will  have  it  by  foul ;  and  unless  they  are  per- 
suaded that  what  they  wish  is  positively  not  desirable,  they  will  continue  to 
endeavor  to  obtain  that  wish  if  it  be  a  possible  thing,  and  by  sly  traverses 
and  cunning  methods.  It  is  only  in  this  way  that  a  wife  ever  tries  to  "man- 
age" her  husband.  And  it  is  in  this  way  that  she  makes  herself  as  wily  as  the 
serpent  in  Eden,  and  develops  qualities  of  deceit  and  craft  that  cannot  help 
being  transmitted  to  her  children.  The  mother  who  desires  to  lower  the 
human  standard,  who  wants  her  children  to  be  in  the  way  of  themselves  be- 
coming the  parents  of  thieves  and  criminals,  will  only  have  to  resort  to  man- 
aging her  husband  in  order  to  sow  the  first  seeds  of  that  sort  of  crop. 

There  is  something  too  base  and  servile  in  the  idea  of  "managing,"  of 
obtaining  a  desire  by  the  hidden  and  circuitous  routes  of  cunning,  for  a 
woman  who  aspires  to  any  worthiness  of  character  to  be  willing  to  confess  to 
it  even  in  her  own  consciousness.  Open  revolt  were  better  in  the  long  run 
for  her,  for  her  family,  for  her  race.  The  trick  is  on  a  par  with  lying,  with 
stealing,  with  forging,  and  with  all  the  low,  small,  slimy  vices;  it  is  degrad- 
ing, not  only  to  the  woman  who  engages  in  the  "management,"  but  to  the 
children,  servants,  and  dependents  who  can  not  fail  to  see  it  done. 


398  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Working  Together. 

The  only  noble  and  honorable  course  for  husband  and  wife,  then,  is 
co-operation,  with  frank  admission  of  the  individual  rights  of  each,  with  the 
same  course  that  would  be  followed  in  independent  friendship,  with  repeated 
assurance  of  love,  and  trust,  and  undiminished  affection — assurance  that  every 
true  wife  wishes  and  longs  for  when  she  is  seventy  as  much  as  when  she  is 
thirty,  that  ought  not  to  pall  upon  any  husband.  The  wife  may  be  guided, 
but  she  is  not  to  be  governed,  and  when  she  is  consulted,  trusted,  treated  as 
an  integer,  and  as  a  person  to  the  full  as  honorable  and  powerful  as  her  hus- 
band is,  the  home  will  be  something  very  different  from  the  harem,  and  very 
much  nearer  heaven  than  any  place  full  of  submissive  hour  is  could  ever  pre- 
tend to  be.  Let  there  be  no  ruling  and  no  managing,  and  there  will  come 
presently  the  ideal  household,  a  place  full  of  joyous  endeavor,  of  fortitude 
in  suffering,  of  glad  fruition  and  content  the  life  long. 

But  even  in  the  ideal  household  there  will  be  household  cares.     In  the 
variation  of  Blackmore's  charming  black-bird's  song  the  strain  goes, 
"Whistle,  father  birdie,  whistle  household  cares  away. 
Household  cares  would  turn  me  soon  from  blackbird  to  a  gray ," 

and  there  is  not  a  woman  who  reads  it  or  hears  it  without  in  her  soul  saying 
"mother  birdie"  in  correction  and  realizing  that  household  cares  are  doing 
that  discoloring  work  for  her,  and  have  been  ever  since  she  undertook  them. 


Daily  Cares. 

It  makes  little  difference  with  her,  either,  in  the  matter,  whether  she  is 
the  wife  of  a  rich  or  of  a  poor  man,  unless  she  is  of  the  mind  and  estate  of 
those  who  employ  a  housekeeper,  and  are  themselves  a  sort  of  "lady  boarder" 
in  the  house ;  that  is,  having  shifted  all  responsibility,  and  having  retained 
only  the  right  to  find  fault,  in  which  case  the  question  only  changes  form  and 
not  nature,  as  the  housekeeper  is  the  one  to  turn  gray  under  the  ceaseless  irri- 
tation of  the  household  cares,  instead  of  herself.  But  women  able  to  hire  a 
housekeeper  in  this  country  are  numerically  but  one  in  ten  thousand,  if  so 
many ;  and  frequently  those  who  are  able  prefer  to  have  the  charge  of  their 
own  house,  and  to  render  account  of  their  own  stewardship;  and  others, 
again,  do  not  desire  the  too  familiar  presence  of  a  third  party  whom  they  con- 
sider neither  quite  equal  nor  quite  servant. 


The  Hired  Housekeeper. 

Something  of  this  latter  feeling  in  relation  to  the  hired  housekeeper 
might  be  overcome  if  those  who  take  the  position — people  usually  who  have 


STEPPING   STONEvS   TO   HAPPINESS. 


399 


THE  IDEAL  HOUSEHOLD. 

been  in  better  circumstances,  and  learned  how  to  do  for  others  by  ruling  their 
own  kingdoms — would  take  it  for  granted  that  it  is  understood  they  are  as 
much  "ladies,"  technically  speaking,  as  their  employers  are;  that  the  position 
and  the  duties  of  making  a  home  comfortable  are  no  more  derogatory  to  their 
dignity  than  keeping  a  school  or  practicing  any  other  profession — since  we 
might  almost  say  that  fine  housekeeping  is  one  of  the  learned  professions — 
and  that  being  understood,  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  all  the  time  asserting  it 
and  insisting  upon  it,  feeling  hurt  if  a  family  prefer  to  be  by  themselves,  or 


4oo  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

if  morning  visits  paid  to  them  and  invitations  extended  to  them  do  not  also 
include  the  housekeeper.  Every  housekeeper  who  in  taking  her  situation 
stipulates  for  her  own  little  parlor  and  her  own  table  makes  herself  a  separate 
family  in  the  family,  with'  her  own  friends,  visits,  and  interests,  solves  the 
question  of  equality  and  of  intrusion,  reduces  it  absolutely  to  one  of  business, 
saves  herself  the  possibility  of  slights  and  hurts  and  becomes  in  the  house  the 
next  valuable  consideration  to  the  strong-box. 


The  Strong  Box. 

It  is  the  strong-box,  after  all,  that  is  at  {he  root  of  a  good  deal  of  the 
household  difficulty;  it  is  the  perpetual  grasping  for  the  coin  that  eludes  the 
fingers,  the  endeavor  to  make  bricks  without  straw.  Women  have  a  natural 
pride  in  their  homes,  poor  or  rich,  and  in  their  administration  of  the  provi- 
sion made  by  their  husbands.  They  think  themselves  culpable  if  they  miss  a 
point  in  the  possibilities  of  that  administration,  in  the  wasting  of  a  crust  by 
oversight,  in  the  breaking  of  a  dish  by  carelessness,  in  the  soiling  of  wall  or 
carpet  or  garment  by  neglect,  in  the  absence  of  t1ie  stitch  in  time  that  saves 
nine  in  the  matter  of  clothes,  in  the  use  of  the  ounce  of  prevention  worth  a 
pound  of  cure  in  the  matter  of  health  and  doctors.  Perhaps  their  husbands 
think  them  culpable,  too,  in  such  case ;  certainly  the  neighbors  do ;  and  quite 
as  often  as  because  it  is  right,  or  as  for  the  applause  of  the  neighbors,  is  the 
work  done  from  fear  of  the  husband's  reproaches.  Yet  it  is  to  be  owned  that 
the  applause  of  the  neighbors  has  a  world  of  influence  upon  these  household 
cares  that  turn  one  from  a  blackbird  to  a  gray.  If  this  wealthier  acquaint- 
ance has  a  "second  girl"  to  aid  her  in  keeping  up  an  "apple-pie  order,"  one 
must  wear  one's  self  out  to  get  in  one's  own  house  with  one's  own  hands  the 
same  apple-pie  arrangement;  if  that  too  industrious  neighbor  has  her  .house- 
cleaning  over  in  March,  one  dares  not  be  behind  lest  one  be  found  a  laggard, 
and  accused  of  want  of  system,  or  ambition,  or  right  feeling,  even  although  it 
had  been  better  to  defer  the  cleansing  process  till  the  muddy  season  were 
gone,  or  till  the  dust  of  furnace  fires,  together  with  the  old  jollity  of  the  open 

ones, 

"Down  that  dark  hole  in  the  floor 
Staggers  and  is  seen  no  more." 

And  if  a  third  equally  forehanded  one  has  made  her  currant  jelly  "before 
the  Fourth, "  one  must  follow  suit,  although  headaches  hang  in  the  air  like 
trip-hammers  ready  to  fall  in  one's  brain,  and  although  one  has  to  run  in  debt 
for  the  sugar,  and  be  harassed  about  the  increased  grocer's  bill,  till  one  is  half 
sick  from  that  also,  and  from  all  the  kindred  apprehensions,  when  that  half- 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  401 

sickness  is  felt,  of  dying  prematurely,  and  leaving  the  children  to  the  care  of 
some  necessary  step-mother,  or  of  leaving  them  without  a  house  over  their 
heads,  anyway,  to  wait  by-and-by  on  those  who  have  been  wont  to  regard 
them  as  their  betters.  And  if  yet  another  friend  has  her  woollen  carpets 
rolled  away  in  summer,  and  straw  mattings  laid  in  their  place,  and  double  win- 
dows put  in  in  the  winter  weather,  and  fires  kept  everywhere,  and  numberless 
other  luxuries  that  could  be  dispensed  with,  one  trembles  lest  one,'s  husband 
should  be  suspected  of  penury,  or  of  inability  to  provide,  or  of  indifference  to 
the  home  comfort,  and  one  goes  without  something  necessary,  and  has  the 
luxury  out  of  hand,  or  so  much  of  it  as  possible.  The  person  who  said,  "Give 
me  the  luxuries,  and  I  care  not  who  has  the  necessaries,  of  life,"  uncon- 
sciously struck  the  keynote  of  some  of  the  bitterest  of  household  cares. 

Yet  none  of  these,  literally  speaking,  are  the  genuine  household  cares. 
One  need  feel  little  interest  in  those  which  proceed  from  pride  and  vanity 
and  pique.  Those  only  with  which  we  have  a  right  to  concern  ourselves  are 
the  cares  which  are  inherent  to  the  average  house,  and  have  to  be  encountered 
whether  or  no.  Perhaps  even  these  cares  are  taken  too  seriously,  and  the 
household  care-taker  does  not  rely  implicitly  enough  on  the  sense  of  justice 
that,  seeing  she  does  her  best,  will  not  expect  of  her  the  impossible.  What 
if  it  is  sweeping  day,  or  baking  day,  or  preserving  day,  if  she  rises  in  the 
morning  with  a  headache  it  is  headache  day,  and  unless  she  wants  another 
and  a  worse  one  in  a  hurry,  she  must  give  up  everything  to  that  headache, 
otherwise  she  is  wasting  health  and  strength,  and  her  husband's  and  her 
family's  substance,  as  well  as  her  ovvn,  for  the  sake  of  a  habit  or  a  petty  pride 
of  routine.  If  sometimes  she  could  bring  herself,  on  seeing  a  spider's  web, 
let  us  say,  to  suffer  it  to  remain  a  while  longer,  against  the  next  time  the  chil- 
dren cut  their  fingers,  perhaps  it  would  not  be  held  as  so  very  heinous  an  act 
as  to  deserve  punishment  in  the  final  settlement.  But  the  fact  is,  it  would 
annoy  her  more  to  know  that  the  cobweb  was  hanging  there  than  it  would  to 
make  the  effort  of  taking  it  away.  It  is  impossible  for  this  natural  care-taker 
to  avoid  fulfilling  the  object  of  her  being,  and  taking  care;  and  the  only 
remedy  is  for  her  supposed  protector,  or  whoever  it  is,  that  is,  that  has  the 
power  to  do  it,  and  to  whom  her  life  and  brain  are  valuable,  or  who  feels  a 
pity  for  the  overworked,  to  force  upon  her,  if  she  will  not  take  it  otherwise, 
a  month's  yearly  separation  from  her  family,  and  every  one  and  everything 
connected  with  it.  

A  Vacation. 

She  will  come  home  from  it  a  new  creature ;  and  even  if  she  find  a  little 
additional  work  waiting  to  her  hands,  the  strength  of  body  and  mind  gained 


402  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

will  make  that  work  seem  light,  and  it  will  pay  in  actual  cost  and  comfort  all 
out  the  most  slenderly  provided  to  try  the  experiment.  After  one  or  two  of 
these  yearly  vacations  she  will  herself  so  feel  the  worth  of  them  that  she  will 
dispense  with  things  to  display  before  the  neighbors  for  the,  sake  of  the 
healthy  relaxation,  will  do  her  utmost  to  arrange  a  corresponding  change  for 
her  husband,  and  will  even  come  to  think  that  if  there  is  no  other  way  of  pro- 
viding the  outing,  the  need  of  it  should  receive  the  attention  of  the  Society 
for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animais. 


School  for  Cooks. 

The  chief  of  the  household  cares  is  always  the  cook.  She  is  very  seldom 
in  the  ordinary  family,  or  in  that  of  narrow  means,  what  she  should  be,  and 
her  shortcomings  do  a  great  deal  to  bring  about  the  change  from  the  black 
bird  to  the  gray.  There  is  one  way  to  overcome  her  incompetency  that  I  have 
often  wondered  was  not  more  generally  pursued.  There  exist  now  in  most  of 
our  larger  cities  good  and  effective  training  schools  for  servants  of  all  classes 
and  capacities;  and,  besides  these,  various  persons  of  skill  and  renown  in 
culinary  matters  advertise  lessons  in  cookery;  standing  ready,  on  certain 
afternoons  of  the  week,  to  impart  to  the  class  of  the  hour  all  that  they  know 
on  the  subject,  even  announcing  in  their  advertisements  the  dishes  to  be  pre- 
pared that  day — fifty  cents  admission,  and  sometimes  not  so 'much. 

Now  it  is  possible  that  the  mistress  who  complains  of  her  cook — and  com- 
plains not  so  much  because  she  herself  is  disappointed  in  the  toothsome  dishes 
attempted  and  ruined  in  her  kitchen,  as  for  the  sake  of  husband  and  friends — 
may  know  how  to  prepare  every  dish  that  these  professors  and  advertising 
teachers  do.  But  she  may  not  have  the  time  or  the  health  or  the  disposition 
to  go  into  the  kitchen  and  teach  their  concoction,  or  other  reasons  may  render 
it  impossible  And  just  as  likely  she  does  not  know  how  to  prepare  them ; 
she  was  learning  to  play  the  piano  which  her  parents  wished  her  to  learn  to 
play,  and  was  not  taught  kitchen-work;  she  was  dancing,  and  receiving  and 
making  calls,  and  leading  a  gay  life,  never  expecting  to  need  the  knowledge 
for  which  she  should  always  be  able  to  pay,  and  for  which  she  may  be  able  to- 
pay  now,  if  she  can  get  it  for  money ;  or  she  chose  the  more  congenial  work 
of  teaching  what  she  had  learned  in  school;  of  painting,  or  designing,  or  en- 
graving; or  she  was  obliged  to  earn  her  living  in  tending  shop,  in  dress-mak- 
ing, and  kindred  employments — and  with  it  all  had  no  opportunity  to  acquire 
skill  in  the  domestic  arts.  Whatever  was  the  reason,  it  was  supposedly  a 
righteous  one,  or  seemed  righteous  at  the  time  it  influenced  her  action.  And 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  403 

whether  that  is  the  case  or  not  does  not  affect  the  fact  that  her  cook  is  a  poor 
one,  and  that  there  is  a  way  of  making  her  a  good  one.  For  the  professors  of 
cookery  have  made  it  a  business  to  inform  themselves  thoroughly;  they  know 
how  to  do  the  best  thing,  and  they  know  the  best  way  of  doing  it ;  they  not 
only  know  all  the  flummeries  and  fancy  affairs  of  the  fine  art  of  cooking,  but 
the  solid  A  B  C  of  the  common  domestic  dinner. 

What  then,  is  easier,  if  one's  cook  is  not  all  in  skill  and  information  that 
she  should  be  than  to  send  her  through  a  course  of  these  lessons  that  she  may 
become  so?  At  the  first  blush  the  suggestion  arouses,  in  some  degree,  a 
sense  of  injustice  at  being  obliged  to  pay  for  the  article  and  yet  not  to  have 
it,  and  in  order  to  get  it,  to  do  what  seems  like  paying  for  it  a  second  time. 
One  feels  that  no  cook,  being  a  human  creature,  with  knowledge  of  right  and 
wrong,  should  engage  to  do  certain  work  unless  she  knows  how  to  do  it,  and 
should  have  a  conscience  about  it  all  herself.  We  have  known  of  some  who 
did,  and  who  privately  took  measures  to  attend  such  affairs  as  these  class  les- 
sons. But  it  is  self-evident  that  cooks  cannot  afford  such  extravagance  out  of 
their  own  pockets ;  and  if  you  want  a  thing  badly  yourself,  you  will  pay  for  it 
even  if  it  does  cost  more  than  honor  and  justice  warrant. 

If  then,  every  city  mistress  who  feels  the  need  of  it  in  her  kitchen  will 
spare  her  cook  on  one  or  two  afternoons  of  every  week,  and  send  her,  not  at 
the  cook's  expense,  but  at  her  own,  to  take  at  least  one  course  of  cookery  les- 
sons, and  afterward  such  lessons  as  propose  to  teach  other  yet  needed  things, 
one  part  of  the  bad  business  would  be  mended. 


A  Radical  Procedure. 

It  is  a  rather  radical  procedure,  but,  as  radical  things  profess  to  do,  it 
strikes  at  the  root.  The  ordinary  idea  is  that  if  anybody  is  to  take  lessons,  it 
should  be  the  mistress,  and  that,  besides,  no  sooner  will  the  cook  be  taught 
than  she  will  demand  higher  wages  or  be  leaving.  But  in  answer  to  such 
arguments  it  is  to  be  said  that  if  the  mistress  wished  to  do  the  cooking  she 
would  not  send  the  cook  to  learn,  and  if  she  does  not  wish  to  do  the  cooking, 
and  does  wish  for  the  cook,  it  is  for  her  interest  to  have  the  cook,  and  not  her- 
self, learn  the  art.  It  would  be  a  foolish  waste  of  material  for  her  to  learn  it, 
and  stay  in  the  parlor.  Au  reste  there  is  nothing  usually  to  hinder  her  from 
taking  lessons  also,  if  she  desires. 

And  for  the  other  matter,  that  of  the  cook's  demands  for  wages  and 
threats  of  leaving,  that  would  have  to  be  arranged  by  agreement,  and  if  the 
cook  left  at  unreasonably  short  notice  after  having  received  the  lessons,  the 


4o4  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

price  would  have  to  be  repaid  from  wages  due.  But  usually  a  grateful  serv- 
ant and  a  pleased  family  could  make  a  compact  that  each  party  would  regard 
as  sacred,  and  would  agree  to  agree  together  as  long  as  one  needs  a  place  and 
the  other  needs  a  maid. 

It  is  scarcely  to  be  expected  that  the  great  body  of  servant-girls  should,  of 
their  own  accord,  rise  and  patronize  the  cooking  professor  in  a  mass.  But  one 
mistress  woiild  set  the  example  to  another ;  they  would  find  themselves  able 
to  afford  the  extra  expense  by  going  without  something  else  for  the  time  be- 
ing, in  consideration  of  the  advantages;  and  one  servant  would  carry  the  tale 
to  the  next,  who  would  hate  to  be  outdone. 

And  as  we  throw  a  stone  into  a  lake,  and  see  the  ripple  spread  through 
circle  after  circle,  from  centre  to  farthest  edge,  so  the  first  mistress  who  de- 
nies herself  some  costlier  whim  or  other  in  order  to  give  to  her  cook,  who, 
however  faithful  and  willing,  is  at  present  but  the  modest  apprentice,  the  full 
scope  and  compass  of  her  trade,  will  have  effected  a  revolution  in  that  world 
which  is  founded  on  the  kitchen,  and  will  have  turned  the  organism  there 
from  darkness  and  dirt  and  confusion  to  sweetness  and  light  and  order. 


Old  Cookery  Books. 

But  if  the  mistress  sets  out  to  study  the  subject  and  art  of  cookery  itself 
in  all  its  bearings,  she  will  find  some  interesting  reading  on  her  way.  From 
any  great  library  she  can  secure  a  collection  of  old-fashioned  cookery  books 
that  will  afford  her  amusement  if  not  instruction.  These  books  are  not 
merely  those  full  of  "Mrs.  A. 's  this,"'  and  "Madame  B. 'sthat,"  but  such  as 
the  entertaining  Dr.  Kichener's,  the  wise  and  witty  Brillat  Savarin's,  and  the 
work  of  the  famous  Mrs.  Glasse,  with  her  descriptions  of  "a  curious  way"  to 
concoct  a  dish,  "a  pretty  way  of  stewing  chicken,"  or  others  where  you  come 
across  such  phrases  as  "as  mellow  as  marrow,"  or  where  directions  to  "pickle 
a  buttocky  beef,"  to  make  a  "Carolina  rice  pudding,"  and  "an  approved 
method  practiced  by  Mrs.  Dukeley,  the  Queen's  tyre-woman,  to  preserve  hair 
and  make  it  grow  thick,"  are  all  huddled  on  the  same  page,  and  where  the 
spelling  is  "salamongundy,"  "asturtion,"  and  "camphire. "  One  of  the  most 
amusing  of  all  the  old  cooks,  who  called  themselves  "artists,"  is  M.  Ude. 
"Take,"  he  says,  "one  or  two  live  eels;  throw  them  into  the  fire;  as  they  are 
twisting  about  on  all  sides  lay  hold  of  them,  with  a  towel  in  your  hand,  and 
skin  them  from  head  to  foot.  This  is  the  only  means  of  drawing  out  all  the 
oil,  which  is  unpalatable  and  indigestible.  Several  reviews,"  he  exclaims,  in- 
dignantly, in  a  later  edition,  "have  accused  me  of  cruelty  because  I  recom- 
mend in  this  work  that  eels  should  be  burned  alive.  As  my  knowledge  in 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  405 

cookery  is  entirely  devoted  to  the  gratification  of  taste  and  the  preservation 
of  health,  I  consider  it  my  duty  to  attend  to  what  is  essential  to  both."  His 
indignation,  however,  is  elsewhere  equaled  by  his  sense  of  any  violation  of 
the  proprieties.  "  Remember  that  the  word  'soup'  is  so  vulgar  as  not  to  be  ad- 
mitted either  in  good  company  or  on  a  good  bill  of  fare,"  he  remarks,  proba- 
bly preferring  "puree"  and  "consomme."  But, with  all  that, the  little  French- 
man has  a  certain  democratic  sense  of  his  own  dignity;  he  fully  expresses  his 
contempt  for  certain  young  British  noblemen  whom  cooks  are  likely  to  en- 
counter. "  Do  not  be  frightened  by  their  repulsive  manners,"  he  says,  gran- 
diloquently. "Never  mind.  Do  as  I  have  done." 

Another  cook  of  a  less  original  cast  of  mind  is  old  Robert  May,  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  a  man  who  used  musk  for  one  of  his  flavorings,  and  all 
of  whose  recipes,  of  an  era  before  any  of  the  French  refinements,  were  on  such 
a  gigantic  scale  that  one  might  think  him  cooking  for  the  lower  gods,  or  at  the 
least  for  an  army  of  Goths  feasting  after  battle.  For  the  curiosity  of  it,  the 
reader  should  glance  over  his  way  of  preparing  what  he  calls  an  ' '  Olio  Pod- 
rida. "  "Take,"  he  directs,  "Pipkin  or  pot,  some  three  gallons,  fill  it  with  fair 
water,  and  set  it  over  a  fire  of  charcoals,  and  put  in  first  your  hardest  meats,  a 
rump  of  beef,  bolonia  sausages,  neats'  tongues,  two  dry  and  two  green,  about 
two  hours  after  the  pot  is  boiled  and  scummed ;  but  put  in  more  presently 
after  your  beef  is  scummed,  mutton,  venison,  pork,  bacon,  all  the  foresaid  in 
gubbins,  as  big. as  a  duck's  egg,  in  equal  pieces;  put  in  also  carrots,  turnips, 
onions,  cabbidge,  in  good  big  pieces,  as  big  as  your  meat,  a  faggot  of  sweet 
herbs  well  bound  up,  and  some  whole  spinage,  sorrel,  burrage,  endive,  mari- 
gold, and  other  good  pothearbs  a  little  chopped ;  and  sometimes  French  bar- 
ley, or  lupins,  green  or  dry. 

"Then,  a  little  before  you  dish  out  your  olio,  put  to  your  pot  cloves,  mace, 
saffron,  etc. 

"Then  next  have  divers  fowls;  as  first,a  goose  or  turkey,  two  capons,  two 
ducks,  two  pheasants,  two  widgeons,  four  partridges,  four  stock-doves,  four 
teals,  eight  snites,  twenty-four  quails,  forty-eight  larks. 

"Boil  these  foresaid  fowls  in  water  and  salt  in  a  pan,  pipkin,  or  pot.. 

"Then  have  bread,  marrow,  bottoms  of  artichokes,  yolks  of  hard  eggs,  large 
mace,  chestnuts  boiled  and  blanched,  two  colliflowers,  saffron. 

"And  stew  these  in  a  pipkin  together,  being  ready  clenged  with  some  good 
sweet  butter,  a  little  white- wine,  and  strong  broth. 

"Some  other  times  for  variety  you  may  use  beets,  potatoes,  skirrets, 
pistaches,  pineapple  seed  or  almonds,  poungarnet,  and  lemons. 

"Now  to  dish  your  olio,  dish  first  your  beef,  veal,  or  pork  ;  then  your  veni- 
son and  mutton,  tongues,  sausage,  and  roots  over  all. 


406  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

"Then  next  your  largest  fowl,  land-fowl  or  sea-fowls,  as  first,  a  goose  or 
turkey,  two  capons,  two  pheasants,  four  ducks,  four  widgeons,  four  stock- 
doves, four  partridges,  eight  teals,  twelve  snites,  twenty-four  quails,  forty- 
eight  larks,  etc. 

"Then  broth  it,  and  put  on  your  pipkin  of  colly  flowers,  artichokes,  chest- 
nuts, some  sweetbreads  fried,  yolks  of  hard  eggs,  then  marrow  boild  in  strong 
broth  or  water,  large  mace,  saffron,  pistaches,  and  all  the  foresaid  things  be- 
ing finely  stewed  up,  and  some  red  beets  over  all,  slict  lemons  and  lemon  peels 
whole,  and  run  it  over  with  beaten  butter. 

"For  the  garnish  of  this  dish  make  marrow  pies,  made  like  round  chew- 
its;"  and  the  garnish  goes  on  to  an  extent  almost  as  elaborate  as  the  original 
dish.  It  is  a  miracle  that  any  one,  unless  provided  with  a  strong  brain  and  a 
sound  stomach,  should  read  this  recipe,  much  less  eat  of  its  results,  without 
an  attack  of  indigestion. 

A  noticeable  feature  in  the  pages  of  these  writers  is  the  way  they  despise 
all  the  world  that  is  not  engaged  in  cookery.  They  make  brief  forays,  every 
once  in  a  while,  into  dominions  foreign  to  their  own  art,  as  if  to  show  their 
capability  in  other  directions,  and  hence  their  right  to  speak ;  but  they  return 
to  the  matter  in  hand  with  a  gusto  that  makes  the  mouth  water,  and  they  take 
care  to  exhibit  the  time-honored  bad  temper  of  a  good  cook,  that  is,  as  it  were, 
a  certificate  of  character,  whether  the  heat  of  the  fires  or  of  the  spices  is  so  ex- 
citing to  the  nerves,  or  whether  they  are  overcome  by  their  thought  of  the 
habitual  waste  of  good  material  by  others. 

The  home-made  cookery  book  is,  however,  often  quite  as  entertaining  as 
the  antiques,  and  in  itself  as  much  of  an  "Olio  Podrida"  of  recipes  as  old  May 
could  get  up  of  comestibles.  Nevertheless,  it  is  an  excellent  plan  for  every 
housekeeper,  old  or  young,  to  write  out  the  formula  of  any  dish  that  pleases 
her  palate  or  the  palates  of  her  family,  for  cooks  change  and  memories  are  de- 
ceitful, and  once  set  down  in  black  and  white,  there  it  is  always  to  refer  to, 
and  much  that  would  escape  is  put  in  preservation,  and  handed  down  from 
mother  to  daughter,  till  it  becomes  a  part  of  the  family  archives,  and  substan- 
tiates the  claim  to  the  nice  manner  of  life  and  generous  table  of  one's  ances- 
tors. For  it  is  plain  to  see  that  the  family  which  made  a  practice  of  cherishing 
daintily  compounded  dishes  for  its  table  had  occasion  for  them,  and  lived 
otherwise,  most  probably,  in  a  style  to  correspond  with  them,  taking  hold  of 
life  in  a  different  fashion  from  those  families  that  had  no  table  repertoire  be- 
yond the  fried  steak  or  the  boiled  cabbage,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  French 
science  of  dressing  beans  to  imitate  either  roast  beef  or  ice-cream  at  discre- 
tion. 

As  she  goes  on,  the  reader  of  these  old  cookery  books  will  find   that  the 


BANQUET  OF  VITELLIUS. 


4o8  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

banqueting  of  her  forbears  was  a  very  different  thing  from  that  of  to-day.  For 
whe.n  the  table  is  set  with  lace  and  satin  and  damask  and  embroideries,  with 
engraved  crystal,  silver  and  gold,  candles,  china  as  beautiful  as  jewels,  with 
banks  of  flowers,  and  all  the  latest  whims  of  decoration,  the  dinner-givers  of 
the  present  think  they  have  done  the  utmost  there  is  to  do  in  the  way  of  or- 
nate splendor,  and  the  rest  goes  without  saying  and  according  to  the  prevail- 
ing custom,  a  rational  and  refined  feast  among  dinner-givers  costing  from  ten 
to  fifty  dollars  a  plate. 

Ancient  Feasts. 

What  would  these  worthy  and  generous  hosts  have  said,  then,  at  the  feasts 
of  Vitellius,  who  in  seven  months  spent  on  his  table  a  sum  equivalent  to  thir- 
ty-five million  dollars;  at  a  time,  too,  when  money  was  more  valuable  than  it 
is  to-day!  Lucullus  also  must  have  been  able  to  give  them  points  in  the  art 
of  banqueting,  when  he  never  had  a  supper  in  his  room  of  Apollo  at  a  less  cost 
than  eighty  thousand  dollars.  And  was  it  not  Apicius — one  of  the  three — 
who  had  a  dish  made  of  the  brains  of  five  hundred  ostriches,  and  the  tongues 
of  five  thousand  birds  that  had  been  taught  to  speak?  There  was  an  old  Ro- 
man cook  in  the  days  of  these  gourmets  and  gourmands  who,  with  a  vanity 
unrivaled  by  any  other  writer  in  history,  save  and  except  M.  Ude,  declared : 
"Assuredly  I  have  discovered  ambrosia.  Had  the  dead  but  the  faculty  of 
smelling,  the  fragrance  of  my  compositions  should  speedily  restore  them  to 
health  and  strength."  Doubtless  this  discovery  of  his  was  washed  down  with 
old  Falernian  or  with  smoky  Greek  wines ;  and  in  the  eight  or  ten  delicate  va- 
rieties of  bottled  sunshine  and  dew,  whose  clusters  of  dainty  glasses  ornamen*- 
the  table  as  much  as  the  flowers  do,  our  later  diners  have  the  advantage. 

But  the  mediaeval  banquet  was  a  very  different  thing  from  the  ancient 
banquet,  which  with  all  its  prodigality,  was  a  thing  of  art  beside  the  other. 
For  the  mediaeval  banquet  was  a  perpetual  effort  for  the  prodigious,  and  the 
men  and  women  who  feasted  at  it  might  have  had  something  about  them  of 
the  bestial  and  the  god  combined  had  their  appetites  really  required  any  such 
feeding.  The  most  poetical  thing  we  have  ever  come  across  in  accounts  of 
their  festivity,  if  it  can  be  called  poetical,  was  the  pillar  erected  at  the  corona- 
tion of  Cceur  de  Lion,  a  hollow  marble  pillar  on  steps,  and  on  the  top  a  gilt 
eagle,  under  whose  claws,  in  the  capital  of  the  pillar,  were  divers  kinds  of 
wines  gushing  forth  at  different  places  all  the  daylong,  of  which  all  who  came, 
were  they  ever  so  poor  and  abject,  were  at  liberty  to  drink.  At  another  feast, 
that  given  at  the  marriage  of  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  the  third  son  of  the 
third  Edward,  to  Violantis,  the  daughter  of  Gelasius  II.,  Duke  of  Milan — a 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  409 

feast  one  of  whose  guests  was  Petrarch — there  were  thirty  courses,  and  be- 
tween every  course  wonderful  presents  were  distributed.  "There  were  in  one 
only  course  seventy  goodly  horses,  adorned  with  silks  and  silver  furniture; 
and  in  the  others  silver  vessels,  falcons,  hounds,  armor  for  horses,  costly 
coates  of  mayle,  breastplates  glittering  of  massive  steele,  helmets  and  corslets 
decked  with  costly  crestes,  apparell  distinct  with  costly  jewels,  souldiers'  gir- 
dles, and  lastly  certain  gemmes  by  curious  art  set  in  gold,  and  of  purple  and 
cloth  of  gold  for  men's  apparell  in  great  abundance.  And  such  was  the  sump- 
tuousness  of  that  banquet,  that  the  meates  which  were  brought  from  the  table 
would  sufficiently  have  served  ten  thousand  men."  Compared  with  this 
wholesale  gift  business,  the  presents,  however  delectable,  distributed  as  fav- 
ors at  recent  germans  and  dinners  must  make,  after  all,  but  a  beggarly  arrqy. 


The  Peacock  at  Banquets. 

At  all  banquets,  both  of  the  elder  and  of  the  middle  ages,  the  peacock  was 
a  favorite  piece  of  decoration.  Sometimes  it  was  quite  covered  with  leaf -gold, 
as  if  that  were  an  improvement  upon  its  brilliant  dyes,  and  with  a  bit  of 
linen  in  its  mouth,  dipped  in  spirits  and  set  on  fire,  it  was  served  on  a  golden 
dish  by  the  lady  of  highest  rank,  attended  by  her  train  of  maidens  and  followed 
by  music,  and  was  set  before  the  most  distinguished  guest.  This  was  a  per- 
formance of  great  state  and  ceremony,  and  the  bird  was  held  in  so  far  sacred 
that  oaths  could  be  taken  on  its  head.  One  of  the  old  turnspit  directors  gives 
us  full  information  as  to  another  and  certainly  handsomer  way  of  serving  the 
creature,  although  one  may  be  pardoned  for  querying  how  it  was  contrived 
afterward  to  carve  him:  "At  a  feeste  roiall  pecokkes  shall  be  dight  on  this 


4io  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

-manner.  Take  and  flee  off  the  skynne  with  the  fedurs,  tayle,  and  nekke,  and 
the  hed  thereon ;  then  take  the  skyn  with  all  the  fedurs  and  lay  hit  on  a  table 
abrode,  and  strawe  thereon  grounden  comyn ;  then  take  the  pecokke  and  roste 
hym,  and  endore  (baste)  him  with  rawe  yolkes  of  egges;  and  when  he  is  rested 
take  hym  off  and  let  hym  cole  awhile,  and  take  and  sowe  hym  in  his  skyn,  and 
.gilde  his  combe,  and  so  serve  hym  forthe  with  the  last  cours. " 

But  whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  decoration  of  the  tables  as  in  com- 
parison with  those  of  our  own  era,  or  of  the  character  of  the  prodigal  squan- 
dering of  food  and  drink,  or  of  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  time  in  gen- 
eral, one  rather  amusing  first  course  of  a  period  as  late  as  1630  is  reported  to 
us  by  Robert  May  in  his  Accomplisht  Cooke — a  book  dedicated  to  Lords 
Mountague,  Lumley,  and  Dorner,  and  to  the  Right  Worshipful  Sir  Kenelm 
Digby,  so  well  known  to  the  nation  for  their  admired  hospitalities,  as  the  writer 
says,  which  interlude,  as  the  writer  further  sets  forth,  was  formerly  one  of  the 
^delights  of  the  nobility  before  good  housekeeping  had  left  England. 


A  Battle  at  Table. 

Among  his  Triumphs  and  Trophies  in  Cookery,  this  good-natured  lit- 
tle author  gives  instructions  for  the  manufacture  of  a  pasteboard  ship,  with 
flags  and  streamers  and  guns,  and  little  trains  of  powder  added  after  it  has 
Tjeen  covered  with  a  coarse  paste  and  baked,  certain  portions  of  it  gilded,  and 
the  whole  planted  in  a  dish  full  of  blown  egg-shells  filled  with  rose-water  and 
set  in  salt.  Opposite  this  is  to  be  a  castle  similarly  manufactured,  with  tur- 
rets and  battlements,  and  drawbridges  and  "percullises."  Between  the  two  is 
a  stag,  compounded  in  like  fashion  again,  with  an  arrow  in  his  side,  and  his 
body  full  of  claret.  Two  pies  then  are  baked,  and  after  baking  the  lids  are 
lifted,  and  one  is  filled  with  live  frogs  and  the  other  with  live  birds.  Then, 
all  being  set  at  table, the  trains  of  powder  are  lighted,  and  the  castle  fires  upon 
the  ship,  and  the  ship  returns  the  fire,  and  the  arrow  is  plucked  from  the  stag, 
-whereon  the  claret  flows  like  life-blood  from  the  wound.  "All  danger  being 
seemingly  over  by  this  time,  you  may  suppose  they  will  desire  to  see  what 
is  in  the  pies;  when,  lifting  first  the  lid  off  one  pie,  out  skips  some  frogs, 
which  makes  the  ladies  to  skip  and  shreek,  and  after  the  other  pie,  whence 
comes  out  the  birds,  who,  by  a  natural  instinct  flying  at  the  light,  will  put  out 
the  candles;  so  that  what  with  the  flying  birds  and  skipping  frogs,  the  one 
above,  the  other  beneath,  will  cause  mtich  delight  and  pleasure  to  the  whole 
company.  At  length  the  candles  are  lighted,  and  a  banquet  brought  in ;  the 
musick  sounds;  and  every  one  with  much  delight  and  content  rehearses  their 
actions  in  the  former  passages."  Certainly  people  who  were  pleased  by  such 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  4n 

tomfoolery  as  this  would  think  very  poorly  of  our  tame  and  quiet  manner  of 
ministering  to  the  senses,  and  were  best  regaled  by  mighty  sides  of  venison, 
by  oxen  roasted  whole,  and  by  copious  washes  of  strong  beer;  their  coarsened 
palates  could  have  seen  no  difference  between  Chateau  Yquem  or  sparkling 
Moselle  and  any  diet  drink.  We  may  not  reach  the  mad  point  of  luxury  of 
Lucullus  and  Apicius,  although  we  are  fain  to  see  no  especial  luxury  in  the 
brains  of  peacocks  and  the  tongues  of  nightingales,  but,  on  the  contrary,  a 
vulgar  brutality ;  but  we  have  certainly  improved  upon  the  ways  of  our  own 
more  immediate  ancestors  in  abolishing  powder  trains  and  jumping  frogs 
from  the  table. 

But  if  we  have  not  rivaled  the  prodigality  of  the  ancients,  we  have  in  this 
country  of  ours  allowed  ourselves  great  latitude  of  lesser  but  almost  as  real  ex- 
travagance, and  we  are  only  now  beginning  to  comprehend  the  wasteful  man- 
ner in  which  for  a  century  and  a  half  at  least,  we  have  been  living,  and  to  feel 
the  need  of  an  economy  that  shall  make  the  most  of  such  provision  as  we 
have,  and  carry  it  farthest.  In  the  earlier  years  of  the  settlement  of  the  con- 
tinent the  food  supply  was  on  a  different  basis  from  that  on  which  it  was 
afterward  placed,  and  during  that  time  the  home  traditions,  those  of  Mother 
England,  were  in  full  play.  In  a  few  families  these  have  descended,  and  are 
recognized  as  binding  to-day,  many  a  stern  woman  having  tyrannized  over  her 
son's  wife  till  she  has  in  her  turn  felt  the  authority  of  the  family  tradition, 
and  thanked  Heaven  and  her  mother-in-law  therefor.  But  in  the  larger  num- 
ber of  families  the  greater  and  still  growing  abundance  cf  food  soon  destroyed 
the  sense  of  any  necessity  to  save  and  spare,  and  a  prodigal  carelessness  and 
wastefulness  was  the  result,  which  has  been  continued  till  to-day. 


Some  Economies. 

Doubtless  it  takes  very  much  more  time  to  practice  these  economies  than 
it  would  to  let  them  pass,  and  continue  to  live  with  spendthrift  ease;  but  it  is 
questionable  if  in  most  instances  the  time  would  be  any  better  spent,  while 
the  result  is  tangible  and  desirable.  It  is  said  that  there  is  enough  substance 
thrown  away  and  squandered  in  American  families  to  keep  the  moderate  French 
or  English  family;  and  although  that  is  probably  an  exggerated  statement, 
there  is  a  moral  in  it.  The  American  marketer  buys  usually  the  best;  it  ap- 
pears upon  her  table  once,  is  sometimes  warmed  over  for  a  second  dish  or  fora 
breakfast,  sometimes  not,  and  Bridget  does  as  she  pleases  with  the  fragments, 
either  giving  or  throwing  them  away.  An  English  woman  buys,  let  us  say,  a 
roasting  piece  of  beef;  she,  too,  buys  the  best,  because,  as  she  will  use  it,  it 


4i2  STEPPING    STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

ib  the  cheapest.  The  upper  cut  makes  one  day's  dinner  handsomely;  the  un- 
der cut,  in  thin  slices,  carved  across  instead  of  up  and  down,  fried  in  butter, 
and  served  on  mashed  potatoes  or  on  rice,  garnishing  the  dish  to  make  it  seem 
like  something  choicer,  and  add  to  appetite,  makes  a  second  dinner;  then  the 
long  end  piece,  which  has  remained  untouched,  makes  an  excellent  stew  with 
tomatoes  or  carrots  and  potato  balls  for  a  third  dinner,  being  cooked  and 
cooled  so  as  to  remove  the  grossness,  and  then  warmed  up  again;  the  various 
fragments  either  make  a  pie,  or,  hashed  and  spiced  or  curried,  answer  for  a 
fourth  dinner,  which  will  be  pieced  out,  as  one  may  say,  by  a  rather  daintier 
dessert  than  usual,  as  the  case  will  be  also  with  the  fifth  dinner — a  soup  of  the 
bones  that  remain,  made  hearty  with  vegetables;  and,  after  all,  there  is  left  a 
store  of  invaluable  dripping.  The  American  housewife  in  comfortable  cir- 
cumstances who  should  make  five  dinners  for  a  moderate  family  from  a  roast 
of  beef  would,  until  recently,  have  considered  herself  a  scrimping  and  shabby 
woman,  and  would  fear  being  held  by  her  neighobrs,  well-informed  through 
the  servants,  as  a  niggardly  skinflint.  Now,  on  the  contrary,  she  is  inclined 
to  look  about  and  see  if  she  can  not  better  instruction,  and  procure  a  sixth 
dish  from  the  same  source. 

The  English  Woman's  Economy. 

But  there  are  various  other  ways  in  which  the  Englishwoman  can  give 
us  lessons  in  economy.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  nothing  is  wasted  under  her 
care.  Even  her  stale  beer  is  saved  to  rinse  her  bronzes  in,  to  boil  with  other 
material  and  make  her  old  plate  look  like  new,  and  to  clean  her  soiled  black 
silks;  and  the  lemons  whose  outer  skin  has  been  grated  off,  and  whose  juice 
has  been  squeezed  out,  if  they  are  not  laid  aside  to  boil  in  any  compound,  are 
given  to  the  cook  to  clean  her  saucepans.  If  she  keeps  fowl,  every  egg 
brought  in  is  dated  with  a  pencil,  and  those  of  the  earlier  date  are  used  first; 
if  there  are  any  to  be  spared,  she  lays  them  by  for  winter  provision,  usually 
by  passing  over  them  a  camel's-hair  pencil  dipped  in  oil,  which  hermetically 
seals  and  preserves  their  contents;  and  where  she  uses  only  the  whites  in  one 
dish,  she  contrives  another  in  which  she  shall  use  the  yolks.  If  the  bread 
has  become  dry,  she  does  not  immediately  throw  it  to  the  hens  or  dedicate  it 
to  a  pudding;  she  dips  the  loaf  in  hot  water,  and  sets  it  in  the  oven,  and  finds 
it  sufficiently  fresh  for  family  use.  Nor  does  she  often  indulge  in  the  doubt- 
ful luxury  of  baker's  bread,  since  she  has  learned  that  she  thereby  loses  in 

bread  just  the  weight  of  the  water  used  in  compounding  it,  besides  running 
the  risk  of  deleterious  ingredients.  And  when  the  bread  is  really  dried  past 

freshening  then  it  answers  for  stuffing,  is  grated  for  crumbs,  or  is  soaked 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  413 

with  milk  and  beaten  eggs  for  puddings;  none  of  it  is  thrown  away.     She 
is  equally  economical  concerning  the  ham ;  when  no  more  slices  can  be  cut 
from  the  bone,  there  is  yet  a  small  quantity  of  dry  meat  upon  it  that  would 
seem  to  most  of  our  housekeepers  as  something  rather  worthless.     Not  so  to 
this  good  woman ;  it  is  dried  a  little  further,  and  then  grated  from  the  bone, 
and  put  away  in  jars,  to  be  taken  out  and  seasoned  on  requirement  for  the  en- 
richment of  omelets,  for  spreading  upon  savory  dishes  of  toast  which  make  a 
nice  addition  to  breakfast  or  lunch,  for  stuffing  olives,   and  making  sand- 
wiches, after  which  grating  the  bone  serves  to  flavor  soup.     In  the  same 
way  she  grates  her  cheese  that  is  too  dry  or  near  the  rind,  using  it  afterward 
as  a  relish,  or  as  a  dressing  to  macaroni  or  other  substance.     All  bones,  mean- 
while, as  well  as  the  ham  bone,  are  objects  of  care  with  her,  or  with  the  serv- 
ants whom  she  has  trained  to  her  will,  and  are  regularly  boiled  down  to  add 
the  result  to  the  stock  pot  for  gravies  and  soups,  by  which  means  she  pro- 
cures the  latter  at  almost  no  cost  at  all.      Whenever  she  has  a  few  slices  of 
heterogeneous  cold  meats,  she  has  countless  palatable  ways  of  using  them — j 
deviled,  broiled  in  a  batter,  scalloped,  minced  into  croquettes  or  mayonnaises. 
As  a  general  although  not  universal  thing,  among  ourselves,  when  these 
stray  bits  and  bones  are  not  thrown  away,  they  are  given  away;  but  the  latter 
is  not  the  English  woman's  idea  of  charity;  she  holds  that  the  poor,  unac- 
customed to  dainty  food,  find  a  coarser  kind  quite  as  agreeable  as  the  leavings 
of  her  table;  she  prepares  especially  for  them,  saving  all  liquors  in  which 
meats  have  been  boiled  as  a  base  for  broths  of  barley  and  pease,  that  are 
regularly  dispensed,  with  tea  leaves  and  coffee  grounds  dried  over,  and  from 
which  a  second  draught  can  be  made,  with  oatmeal,  vegetables,  and  dripping. 
Dripping,  by-the-way,  forms  no  inconsiderable  item  in  this  sort  of  economy; 
it  is  skimmed  from  every  pot  and  saved  from  every  pan,  and  when  a  sufficient 
quantity  accumulates  it  is  clarified  by  pouring  boiling  water  upon  it,  mixing 
it  well,  and  putting  it  by  to  ''set,"  the  sediment  going  to  the  bottom  when 
cold,  leaving  a  hard  clean  cake,  which  is  useful  on  domestic  occasions  where 
butter  or  lard  would  be  used,   as  the  "shortening"  of  meat-pie  crusts  and 
gingerbread,  and  for  common  basting  and  frying. 


Saving  on  a  Small  Scale. 

Some  housekeepers,  to  be  sure,  who  are  able  to  live  more  sumptuously, 
abandon  this  to  the  cook,  by  whom  it  is  claimed  as  a  perquisite,  and  valued 
as  an  equivalent  of  large  extra  wages.  Beyond  this  system  of  saving  on  a 
small  scale  and  doing  it  so  regularly  and  so  precisely  that  it  becomes  second 


4i4  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

nature,  and  is  done  with  as  little  extra  thought  as  there  is  given  to  the  paring 
of  the  potatoes,  the  English  housekeeper  goes  further,  in  dealing  out  to  her 
servants  the  week's  allowance  of  sugar,  rice,  flour,  coffee,  and  all  other  house- 
hold provision  that  is  kept  in  quantity,  and  requiring  an  account  of  it  all  to 
be  rendered,  the  thing  having  been  brought  to  so  fine  a  point  that  she  knows 
the  exact  amount  of  each  article  requisite  for  her  family,  allowing  so  much  to- 
each  individual,  and  that  quantity  being  sufficient,  as  she  knows  by  experi- 
ence; two  ounces  of  tea,  for  instance,  being  regarded  as  a  week's  supply  for 
each  single  individual,  one-half  pound  of  sugar,  three  and  one-half  pounds  of 
meat  for  a  woman  and  five  and  one-quarter  fora  man — facts  which  the  house- 
keeper probably  learned  from  her  mother,  and  she  from  her  mother  before 
her — knowing,  moreover,  that  the  greater  variety  of  food  offered  diminishes 
the  quantity  of  the  simpler  kinds  required.  All  of  these  stores  she  sets  down 
in  her  housekeeping  book  as  she  gives  them  out,  and  she  does  not  fail  on  the 
next  dispensing  day  to  consult  her  dates,  and  if  anything  be  left  over  in  the 
cook's  hands  not  accounted  for,  to  subtract  that  from  the  amount  to  be  newly 
issued.  And  in  England  servants  expect  this ;  so  far  from  being  indignant 
with  it,  they  would  feel  as  if  there  were  no  guiding  hand  behind  them  were  it 
left  undone,  and  they  given  their  head  in  an  overflowing  store-room,  as  ser- 
vants are  with  us.  In  fact,  there  is  no  saving  which  the  housewife  across  the 
water  considers  too  small  to  practice,  or  as  beneath  her  dignity;  and  when 
we  shall  have  followed  her  example  in  her  pet  economies  more  generally  than 
we  follow  it  at  present,  we  shall  have  more  right  and  more  ability  to  indulge 
ourselves  in  our  pet  extravagances  otherwise. 


Old  Dishes. 

And  in  addition  to  such  economies  there  are  others  to  be  made  in  con- 
sidering and  possibly  adopting  a  good  many  valuable  dishes  which  are  either 
in  bad  repute  for  no  good  reason  as  coarse  articles  of  food,  or  are  forgotten 
and  only  to  be  seen  in  those  old  families  that  have  preserved  their  traditions. 
We  should  be  able  to  increase  our  variety  somewhat  if  we  occasionally  re- 
membered them,  or  looked  about  us  and  made  inquiries  in  the  old  mansions 
or  hovels  concerning  them.  Who  can  not  call  to  mind  some  one  of  those  old 
dwellings  where  the  mistress  does  as  her  grandmother  did  before  her,  with 
her  potpourri  of  rose  leaves  in  the  old  china  jug,  in  the  one  case  in  the  par- 
lor, and  in  the  other  in  the  kitchen,  with  crook -necks  over  the  high  shelf,  and 
long  strings  of  tiny  savory  onions  hanging  about  them,  only  one  at  a  time  of 
the  choice  things  to  be  used  for  adding  flavor  to  some  dish,  and  all  of  them, 
if  one  looked  with  the  same  eye  to  grace  and  tint,  an  ornament  of  beauty  past 


STEPPING    STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  4i5 

buying5  In  among  them  will  be  the  bunches  of  herbs — the  pot-herbs  of  fen- 
nel and  parsley,  the  sweet  herbs  that  distil  faint  perfume  on  the  air  with  every 
waft  of  the  steam  beneath  them,  thyme,  sage,  mint,  marjoram,  and  sweet- 
basil,  and  all  of  them,  though  now  but  kitchen  herbs,  once  parts  of  ancient 
song  and  verse.  There,  also,  will  be  the  dried  bulbs  of  the  purple  orchis- 
which  in  heat  and  thunder  keep  the  milk  from  souring.  On  the  fire,  per- 
haps, a  curious  preparation  will  be  simmering — greens,  but  tender  and  need- 
ing no  vinegar  or  dressing,  as  they  are  the  common  sorrel  leaves  stewed  in 
no  water,  but  in  their  own  juice,  and  seasoned  to  the  fancy;  or  perhaps  a  pot 
of  dhal  will  be  bubbling — split  peas  with  curry,  bits  of  onion  and  butter,  and 
"three  cloves  chopped  fine."  On  this  same  fire  it  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  a 
dish  of  sour-krout  may  be  in  preparation,  sweet  and  odorless,  and  wondering 
at  the  bad  name  it  has  in  the  world,  made  with  such  care  to  renew  its  brine 
frequently,  and  its  linen  cover  being  so  often  rinsed  that  it  has  none  but  an 
appetizing  smell;  if  it  is  in  the  summer,  too,  hop  tops  will  be  boiling  in  a  lit- 
tle flat  pan  as  a  sort  of  substitute  for  asparagus,  for  however  well-to-do  in  the 
world  now  the  family  may  be,  the  traditions  of  a  time  when  inventive  genius 
had  to  apply  itself  to  turn  everything  to  account  are  still  preserved  with 
them.  If  you  look  in  the  store-room  of  any  such  house  you  will  find  an  odd* 
array  of  jars;  there  will  be  a  pot  of  coarse  "carrageen  moss"  picked  upon 
some  afternoon  excursion  to  the  sea-beach,  and  cleansed  and  dried  for  blanc- 
mange', there  will  be  strange  pickles,  samphire  whose  little  pulpy  red  reeds 
have  been  covered  with  hot  vinegar  and  spices,  gathered  on  the  marshes,  no 
longer  with  the  dangers  that  accompanied  its  plucking  in  the  time  of  the 
crazed  old  Lear: 

"The  crows  and  choughs  that  winged  the  midway  air 

Show  scarce  so  gross  as  beetles.     Half  way  down 

Hangs  one  that  gathers  samphire — dreadful  trade! 

Methinks  he  seems  no  bigger  than  his  head." 

Here,  too,  are  bottles  of  the  nasturtium  seeds  that  answer  all  the  pur- 
poses of  foreign  capers,  and  cost  nothing.  There  are  pots  of  the  Jerusalem 
artichoke,  too,  so  called  by  corrupting  its  own  pretty  name  of  Girasole,  be- 
cause the  plant  producing  it  turns  always  toward  the  sun ;  and  here  are  jars 
of  East  India  sauces  and  pickles  all  made  at  home,  but  with  such  cunning  dis- 
guise and  deceit  of  raw  ginger,  red  peppers,  garlic,  turmeric,  and  mustard 
that  only  the  trained  palate  knows  the  difference.  Preserves  and  sweetmeats, 
also,  of  unaccustomed  sorts  will  appear  here — a  rhubarb  marmalade,  one  of 
the  red  Malta  orange,  the  blood  orange  that  grows  from  a  graft  of  orange  on 
pomegranate,  another  of  green  orange  peel  that  brings  the  whole  tropics  about 
the  taster,  mulberry  sirup  for  sore  throats,  Normandy  biffens,  or  apples 


416  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

shriveled  in  the  oven,  to  be  stewed  in  the  winter  days;  jars  of  candied  lemon 
peel,  and  of  a  foreign  flavored  jam  made  of  the  red  lips  of  the  wild-rose 
bushes,  stewed  and  strained  and  sweetened  and  strengthened  with  a  dash  of 
spirit,  something,  perhaps,  after  the  pattern  of  the  old  rose  conserve  of  the 
Venetians;  flasks  of  noyau  made  of  honey  and  peach  kernels;  and  another 
home-made  cordial — a  maraschino-like  thing  of  beech  leaves  steeped  in  sirup, 
gin,  and  sugar — in  fact,  all  manner  of  curious  and  strange  little  compotes  and 
rarities  that  one  would  never  see  anywhere  else  under  the  sun,  and  memory 
of  many  of  which  has  quite  died  from  among  us. 


Different  Kitchens. 

Any  housekeeper  who  knows  how  unpleasant  it  is  always  to  be  obliged  to 
set  the  same  round  and  routine  before  her  guests,  would  be  thankful  for  any 
thing  that  enlivens  it,  that  varies  it  with  a  new  sensation ;  and  it  has  often 
struck  us  that  it  would  be  a  good  plan  if  our  country  tourists  made  friends 
now  and  then  with  some  of  the  simple  families  of  the  old  farm-houses,  and 
learned  where  the  arcana  of  their  kitchen  secrets  differ  from  their  own.  We 
all  know  how  good  it  seems  to  come  home  to  our  own  table  and  the  manner 
of  cooking  to  which  we  have  been  accustomed,  even  after  the  most  luxurious 
of  hotel  tables;  and  we  all  know  how  useful  it  is,  when  the  appetite  is  poor, 
once  in  a  while  to  spend  a  day  or  two  away  from  home,  and  taste  the  customs 
of  other  kitchens  and  dining  tables.  Some  little  quaint  thing  that  nobody 
ever  heard  of,  or  at  any  rate  ever  tasted,  is  a  treasure  to  the  tired  brain  of 
the  provider,  and  even  if  it  is  not  a  complete  success,  it  has  changed  the  cur- 
rent of  monotonous  dishes ;  and,  as  in  other  things,  it  is  sometimes  better  to 
have  failed  than  not  to  have  tried  at  all.  Meantime,  there  is  some  reason 
for  the  self-satisfaction  of  noted  cooks,  even  if  not  quite  to  the  extent  of  the 
one  who  considered  the  inventor  of  a  new  sauce  as  the  equal  of  a  great  gen- 
eral ;  for  the  one  who  puts  together  a  new  dish  is  certainly,  to  a  larger  degree 
than  it  would  seem,  in  enlivening,  in  gratifying,  in  pleasing,  a  family  bene- 
factor. 

And  it  is,  indeed,  still  more  becoming  to  look  about  us  and  do  the  best 
we  can  with  all  the  material  at  hand,  since  there  has  been  such  a  change  in 
relation  to  income  and  outlay  in  the  increase  of  prices  of  all  the  commodities 
of  life;  a  change  that  has  made  it  difficult  for  the  master  of  the  house  not  to 
do  the  small  and  pitiful  thing,  and  has  caused  many  a  house-mother  to  groan 
in  spirit  seeing  the  quarterly  bills  mounting,  and  not  knowing  where  the 
money  is  to  come  from  to  meet  them.  And  yet  all  the  time — all  the  spring 
and  summer  time  at  least — there  is  suitable  and  delicious  provision  at  hand, 


STEPPING    STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  4i-7 

waiting  to  be  taken,  asking  to  be  eaten,  receiving  nothing  but  contumely,  yet 
capable  of  making  a  third  dish  at  every  meal  for  absolutely  no  price  but  its 
seasoning — a  bit  of  butter,  a  pinch  of  salt  and  pepper. 


Undreamed  of  Dishes. 

Some  of  these  pleasant  esculents  are  things  dreamed  of  in  the  philosophy 
cf  very  few  of  us.  For  the  first  of  them — friends  in  need,  as  they  will  prove 
to  those  who  adopt  them — who  would  think  of  turning  to  the  nettle,  that  hate- 
ful plant  whose  stings  are  a  torture,  and  of  which  we  make  all  effort  to  rid  our 
land  ?  This  nettle  is  a  plant  of  such  a  pungent  and  astringent  nature  that  its 
juice,  applied  on  lint,  will  stop  the  flow  of  blood  from  the  nostrils  and  from 
any  slight  wound ;  there  is  a  property  in  its  seeds  powerful  enough  to  fight 
successfully  against  the  dreadful  goitre;  and  it  is  acrid  enough,  too,  to  give 
flexibility  to  a  bit  of  steel  that  has  been  dipped  in  it.  With  such  properties 
it  is  hard  to  imagine  it  an  edible,  and  almost  impossible  to  think  of  it  as  a 
choice  edible.  Yet,  boiled  and  drained  and  chopped  and  served  hot  with 
butter  and  pepper  on  toast,  it  is  an  excellent  substitute  for  spinach,  and  is 
preferred  by  many.  If  this  seems  strange  to  any  of  my  readers  unaccustomed 
to  such  aid  in  their  bill  of  fare,  they  will  perhaps  think  it  stranger  still  that 
quite  as  palatable  a  dish  is  to  be  had  from  burdocks  prepared  in  the  same 
manner.  A  dish  that  is  very  agreeable,  also,  is  made  from  certain  of  the  very 
young  ferns,  a  peculiar  variety,  boiled  not  quite  a  half  hour  and  served  with 
drawn  butter  or  on  buttered  toast.  Nobody,  to  look  at  the  little  downy, 
curled-up  things,  would  ever  dream  of  dining  on  them ;  but  they  are  really 
medicinal,  in  addition  to  their  other  qualities,  being  a  good  tonic,  and  having 
some  of  the  same  properties  that  the  dandelion  has  in  relation  to  biliousness, 
and  they  are  of  some  service  to  dyspeptics.  They  must  be  plucked  very 
young,  when  still  woolly  and  curled  up;  blanching  improves  them;  they 
should  be  boiled  a  little  over  an  hour,  with  some  salt  in  the  water,  and  will 
be  found  excellent  as  a  change  of  diet  in  the  early  season  to  which  they  be- 
long. We  shall  hardly  be  accused  of  helping  to  hurt  the  beauty  of  the  nat- 
ural world  by  assisting  in  destroying  the  kingdom  of  ferns  in  thus  advising 
their  use — loveliest  of  all  shapes,  as  they  are,  which  nature  imitates  in  every 
crystal  and  on  every  pane — because  the  fern  is  so  prolific  that  it  would  take 
the  aeons  it  required  to  bring  the  world  out  of  that  primeval  condition  when 
all  growth  was  more  or  less  ferny  in  order  really  to  put  an  end  to  the  pretty 
things. 

Besides  these  uncouth  vegetables  which  may  be  impressed  into  our  serv- 


4I8  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

ice,  there  are  several  excellent  "greens"  not  in  common  use,  though  growing- 
everywhere.  Among  them  is  the  much-despised  purslane,  the  bane  of  gar- 
dens, the  object  of  the  farmer's  loathing,  and  which  the  author  of  A  Summer 
in  My  Garden  has  loaded  with  witty  obloquy.  Nothing  sweeter  nor  more 
succulent  and  nourishing  is  known  in  the  way  of  "greens,"  and  those  of  our 
readers  who  see  its  pulpy  sprays  spreading  from  spot  to  spot  in  their  gardens 
are  advised  by  us  to  turn  it  to  account  and  save  many  a  half  dollar  at  the 
green-grocer's.  Five  minutes'  work  will  gather  sufficient  for  a  large  family. 


The  Mushroom. 

But  perhaps  nothing  is  quite  so  generally  neglected  as  the  generous  and 
multitudinous  mushroom. 

It  is  true  that  very  few  people  feel  well  enough  acquainted  with  it  to  dare 
pick  it,  and  there  are  as  many  various  opinions  concerning  its  distinguishing 
marks  as  there  are  mushrooms — these  picking  anything  for  mushrooms  that 
grows  with  nothing  between  itself  and  the  sky,  those  contending  that  the  best 
mushrooms  are  grown  in  the  darkness  of  cellars,  some  of  the  growth  that  we 
knock  over  in  our  pastures  for  toad-stools  being  the  favorite  mushrooms  in 
the  foreign  market,  for  instance,  and  those  that  the  English  esteem  as  the  best 
being  considered  poisonous  by  the  Italians,  and  making  the  burden  of  one  of 
their  bitterest  imprecations.  It  is  worth  the  reader's  while  to  educate  herself 
in  the  knowledge  of  the  varieties  of  this  appetizing  fungus,  for,  rich  as  a  veni- 
son steak  when  broiled  and  buttered,  with  pepper  and  salt,  stewed  it  gives  a 
strong  and  juicy  gravy,  and  minced  it  imparts  a  fine  and  rare  flavor  to  any 
dish  with  which  it  is  mingled,  so  that,  as  may  be  easily  seen,  it  is  no  mean 
accession  to  the  store-room ;  and  as  it  can  be  dried  and  strung,  it  is  one  of  the 
things  that  can  be  relied  upon  for  the  round  year.  Another  article  that  is  not 
often  thought  of  among  ourselves  for  its  capabilities  as  food,  however  in  its 
ultimate  results  of  pumpkin-pie  it  may  be  valued,  is  the  pumpkin  blossom ; 
though  if  one  should  see  a  market  scene  in  some  Mexican  mountain  town, 
with  heaps  of  the  great  golden  flowers  all  tumbled  together  and  trembling 
with  dew,  one  would  understand  that  its  capabilities  were  appreciated  else- 
where. These  blossoms,  torn  apart  and  tossed  in  a  napkin  to  absorb  the  dew, 
and  dressed  like  lettuce,  make  as  tender  and  crisp  a  salad  as  an  epicure — and 
a  Spanish  epicure  at  that — could  desire. 

These  are  but  a  few  instances  of  the  use  of  the  things  that  are  usually 
considered  worthless,  but  which  are  lying  all  about  us,  and  the  moment  that 
we  observe  them  remind  us  of  the  beggar  with  whom  St.  Martin  divided  his. 
cloak,  and  show  that  the  humblest  object  is  not  to  be  despised. 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  419 

The  Story  of  Sylvia  Dexter. 

The  mother  of  Sylvia  Dexter  was  a  woman  who  never  would  have 
dreamed  of  any  of  these  out-of-the-way  dishes,  and  would  have  scorned  to 
use  them  had  she  known  of  them.  But  Sylvia,  herself,  would,  I  think,  have 
discovered  them,  every  one 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Dexter,  "honest  poverty  is  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of." 

"Nothing  to  be  proud  of,  either,"  said  his  son  John. 

"And  very  disagreeable,  anyway,"  said  Sylvia,  his  pretty  daughter 

"Well,  I  don't  know  why  we  need  to  talk  about  it.  It's  something  of 
which  we  have  no  experience,"  said  his  wife,  "honest,  or  otherwise." 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Dexter  again — looking  round  at  the  breakfast  room, 
whose  walls  were  lined  with  Sylvia's  vines  and  flowering  plants  that  made  it 
a  bower  of  greenery,  at  his  shining  table,  and  the  pretty,  petulant  woman  with 
her  pink  ribbons  at  its  head — "we  have  every  comfort,  and  some  luxury"- 

"Papa  means  mamma  for  the  luxury." 

"No ;  he  means  her  for  the  comfort, "  said  John,  who  was  her  special  care. 

"Thanks,  thanks,"  said  mamma,  bridling  a  little.  "Comfort  is  quite 
relative." 

"A  very  dear  relative,  sometimes,"  said  John. 

"John,"  cried  Sylvia;  "you  really  must  go  into  politics!" 

"Heaven  forbid!"  said  his  father. 

"He  has  such  a  capacity  for  pretty  speeches  he  would  be  invaluable  in 
diplomacy,"  urged  Sylvia. 

"It  is  all  he  has  a  capacity  for,"  his  father  thought.  But  he  did  not  say 
so.  "No,  no,"  he  said;  "the  less  politics  the  better.  His  desk  in  the  book- 
store is  the  place  for  John." 

"I  should  be  well  enough  content  with  that  if  I  owned  the  shop, "  said 
John.  "But  this  spending  the  best  of  your  days  for  others  isn't  what  it 
might  be." 

"It  is  a  great  deal  better  than  running  into  debt  for  your  beginning, " 
said  his  father,  as  he  left  them. 

"Yes,"  said  Sylvia;  "save  your  salary  and  wait  till  I  can  help  you." 

"You!"  was  the  contemptuous  reply. 

"I  do  think,"  said  Mrs.  Dexter,  "that  a  little  dose  of  poverty  wouldn't  be 
amiss  for  Sylvia.  She  always  feels  such  immense  capabilities  that  it  might 
bring  her  " 

"To  a  realizing  sense  of  her  inefficiency,"  said  Sylvia.  "Well,  mamma," 
she  added  presently,  sipping  her  coffee— John  having  gone  upstairs  again  to 
change  his  tie — "you  speak  as  if  that  would  give  you  pleasure." 


420  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

"No,  I  don't;  not  at  all.     But  you  are  always  opposing  John" 

"Why,  mamma!" 

"Yes,  you  are.  The  moment  John  comes  anywhere  near  proposing  to 
your  father  to  give  him  the  money  to  buy  out  the  stock  of  that  place,  you 
come  in  with  your  influence  against  it. ' ' 

"My  influence,  mamma!     As  if  there  were  such  a  thing!" 

"Well,  there  is!  You  are  so  exactly  like  your  father  that  he  hears  all  you 
say.  And  he  feels  you  behind  him  and  laughs  the  whole  thing  off.  Saving 
his  salary,  indeed !  He  might  as  well  think  of  buying  the  crown  jewels  with 
his  salary!  A  salary  is  a  dreadful  thing;  it  binds  you  down  in  chains.  Yes; 
there  is  no  doubt  about  it,  a  salary  is  a  dreadful  thing." 

"But,  mamma,  do  you  think  it  is  right,  when  papa  has  you  and  the  little 
children  on  his  hands — I  don't  speak  of  myself,  because  I  suppose  I  can  see  to 
myself." 

"There  it  is  again!     Your  immeasurable  conceit  of  yourself." 

"But,  mamma,  there  are  quantities  of  young  girls  who  do  take  care  of 
themselves."" 

"Their  name  is  not  Sylvia  Dexter,  then." 

"Well,  if  I  can't  see  to  myself,  it  seems  to  me  there  is  all  the  more  reason 
for  papa's  not  crippling  himself  by  giving  his  money  to  John  and  risking 
everything. ' ' 

"There  is  no  risk  about  it.  You  are  a  selfish  and  unnatural  girl,  Sylvia! 
You  would  let  your  poor  brother  toil  and  moil  all  his  life,  rather  than  make  a 
little  sacrifice  yourself.  And  he  has  always  been  so  good,  so  kind ;  he  was 
such  a  beautiful  child — I  remember  when  his  curls  were  cut  off  that  Mrs. 
Dares  said'1 

"Mamma,  dear,  you  sent  Julia  on  an  errand,  and  said  you  would  make 
John's  lunch" 

"Sylvia!  And  it's  almost  train  time!  Why  didn't  you  see  to  it?  So 
full  of  the  good  of  the  family  theoretically — and  poor  John  all  day  in  town 
with  nothing  to  eat" 

"And  not  a  restaurant  handy,"  said  Sylvia.  "Well,  I  have  seen  to  it. 
And  there's  an  egg-sandwich,  and  a  breast  of  duck,  and  some  celery,  and 
some  salt,  and  a  buttered  muffin,  and  a  little  tart,  and  a  doughnut,  and  a  flask 
of  coffee.  John  has  a  better  luncheon  than  we  shall  have.  He  has  it  every 
day." 

"I  should  think  you  grudged  it  to  your  brother!" 

44 No,  indeed!  John  likes  good  things,  and  I  like  to  put  them  up  for  him  ; 
so  we  are  even.  John  doesn't  think  so  badly  of  me  as  you  do,  mamma." 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean,  Sylvia.     I  never  said  I  thought  badly  of 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  421 

you.     You  annoy  me  with  your  jealousy  of  John — poor,  dear  John ;  he  was 
meant  for  a  prince — and  you  uphold  your  father  in  his  severity." 

"Here,  John — excuse  me,  mamma — here,  John!  "  cried  Sylvia,  hurrying 
to  the  door  as  he  went  by.  "Don't  forget  your  luncheon." 

"Oh,  hang  the  luncheon!"  cried  John,  as  he  took  the  parcel.  "My 
father's  economies  will  be  the  ruin  of  this  family  yet.  If  there's  any  one 
thing  that  has  a  cheap  and  detestable  look,  it's  this  pulling  a  luncheon  out  of 
your  desk  instead  of  going  out  like  a  man  with  any  independence." 

"I'm  sure  you  needn't  take  it,  John,  if  you  don't  wish,"  remonstrated 
his  mother. 

"Yes,  take  it,  John,"  interpolated  Sylvia.  "A  penny  saved  is  a  penny 
earned.  It  means  more  than  half  a  dollar  toward  your  capital." 

"Come,  now,  that's  interesting!  Work  it  out  for  me  while  I'm  gone,  and 
see  if  I  will  have  enough  at  that  rate  to  put  out  at  interest  before  I  die." 

"There,"  said  Sylvia  to  herself,  "I  shall  say  no  more  about  it.  If  papa 
chooses  to  take  the  risk — poor  papa!  Well,  it's  fortunate  that  Aunt  Jeannette 
has  invited  me  to  visit  her  just  now."  And  she  put  on  her  jacket  to  go  and 
call  upon  the  neighbor  whose  cow  pastured  in  her  lot,  and  see  if  it  would  not 
be  as  convenient  to  pay  the  rent  now  as  later,  so  that  she  need  not  ask  her 
father  to  open  his  purse  for  her.  And  she  came  back  with  so  bright  a  face 
that  her  mother  declared  she  thought  that  cow-right  was  worth  more  to 
Sylvia  than  the  whole  place  to  them. 

"Perhaps  it  is,"  said  Sylvia;  "for  it's  mine,  mamma.     And  it  isn't  going 
to  be  absorbed  and  lost  in  John's  business,  if  the  rest  of  the  place  is." 

For  the  little  three-acre  lot  was  Sylvia's.  She  had  bought  it  and  paid  for 
it  from  her  small  savings,  together  with  the  two  hundred  dollars  her  grand- 
mother had  left  her,  when  there  was  a  rumor  of  its  purchase  for  some  unpleas- 
ant purpose,  it  being  just  at  the  foot  of  the  garden.  Her  mother  had  never 
given  her  any  peace  concerning  it,  so  to  say.  She  ought  to  have  lent  the 
money  to  John,  was  the  tenor  of  'Mrs.  Dexter's  frequent  remark;  and  doubt- 
less she  would  have  done  so  but  for  Harley  Melton's  influence,  and  for  her 
part  she  wished  Sylvia  had  never  set  eyes  on  Harley,  undesirable  and  unsuit- 
able as  he  was!  But  Sylvia,  for  all  that,  had  been  a  proud  and  happy  land- 
holder and  taxpayer  ever  since,  and  had  enjoyed  the  sight  of  the  neighbor's 
cow  under  the  great  trees,  and  drinking  from  the  little  brook  formed  *  y  the 
spring  that  bubbled  there  as  cold  as  if  it  had  come  all  the  way  from  Spitz- 
bergen ;  and  she  had  enjoyed  quite  as  much  the  ten  dollars  a  summer  that  the 
neighbor  paid  her. 

She  had  had  another  pleasure  in  it,  too ;  for  often  had  she  and  Harley 
Melton  laid  out  those  three  acres  in  their  strolls  across  them ;  and  here  should 


422 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


be  the    house,    and  here  the  little  lawn,  and   here  the 

orchard ;  and  it  would  be  ^  -  so  pleasant,  being  near  papa ; 

and    if    Harley   did    not         --J^llS     '**%  \  think  it  would  be  so 

*    *  "•__!       ^•ai?*'*?.,-  i   \ 

pleasant  being  near 
mamma,     he 
kept       the 
thought       to 
himself.  Syl- 
via, with  her 
great    blue 
eyes,     her 
lovely      fair- 
n  e  s  s,    her 
sweet        and 
sparkling 
brown -haired 
beauty,     was 
so     precious, 
that     if     the 
mother    who 
bore  her  was 
not     perfect, 
too,    he    was 
not  sure  that 
the  fault  was 
not  in  himself.    He 
loved     Sylvia     be- 
yond    any    words, 
the  bright  and  busy 
little  creature,  alive 
to  the   tips   of  her 
hair    with     interest     in    all 
things  and  all   people,  feel- 
ing all  things  alive  as   well 
to  her,  the  bird  on  the  bough, 
the  blossom  there,  too,  the 
LOOK  AT  THE  JEWELS.    OH,  WHAT  A  GLITTER.'        child     playing    beneath    it. 

They  had  no  idea  of  marry- 
ing, except  far  in  the  indefinite  future ;  they  had  nothing  to  marry  on ;  it 
was  enough  to  love  each  other  now;  by-and-by  they  would  build  the  little 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  423 

house,  perhaps,  in  the  piece  of  pasture.  They  used  to  wander  over  the  bit 
of  land  as  if  it  were  an  estate,  with  a  joy  of  possession;  and  where  the  spring 
bubbled  out  of  the  ledge  that  cropped  up  beneath  the  group  of  great  trees, 
they  would  sit  and  watch  the  water  as  if  every  bubble  were  a  miracle. 

"Just  look  down  in  it,  Harley — how  clear!  Look  at  the  jewels  on  the 
bottom ;  they  are  rubies,  sapphires,  emeralds,  opals,  topazes,  beryls — oh,  what 
a  glitter!  What  color,  what  splendor!  It  seems  as  if  I  could  put  down  my 
arm  and  scoop  up  a  handful  of  the  gorgeous  things." 

"The  pebbles  down  there?  It  is  the  wonderful  clearness  of  the  water  that 
makes  them  seem  so  near;  and  I  suppose  it  is  the  vertical  sunbeam  that 
makes  them  seem  so  beautiful.  They  are  really  a  dozen  feet  beyond  your 
reach,"  said  the  young  chemist. 

"They  can't  be,  Harley!" 

"Yes,  I  sounded  the  spring  last  week;  it  is  eighteen  feet  deep;  and  I 
don't  dare  to  say  how  many  gallons  it  pours  out  a  minute  that  all  go  to  waste 
through  the  Telassee  River." 

"To  think  that  our  brook  makes  part  of  a  big  river!" 

"And  I  analyzed  it,  too.  The  river  that  went  out  of  Eden  could  not  be 
purer.  One  drinking  this  might  think  he  was  drinking  of  the  water  of  life." 

"Well,  it  will  be  Eden  when  we  have  our  little  house  up  there  on  the 
knoll.  What  a  beautiful  earth  it  is,  Harley,  when  such  freshness  and  purity 
pour  out  of  its  dark  places !  What  a  dear  earth,  to  let  us  call  this  little  piece 
of  her  ours!" 

"I  really  should  think,"  said  Mrs.  Dexter  when  Sylvia  came  in,  "that  that 
spring  was  full  of  diamonds  by  the  way  you  and  Harley  Melton  hang  over  it. " 

"It  is,  mamma — it  is!"  and  Sylvia  danced  away  with  no  idea  of  the  truth 
in  her  words. 

It  was  lonesome  at  Aunt  Jeannette's,  in  the  big  town  twenty  miles  away. 
Her  father  and  John  and  Harley  came  in  every  day  to  their  business,  and  for 
five  minutes  she  saw  Harley,  who  made  occasion  to  go  by  the  gate.  Her 
father  and  John  found  time  for  few  visits.  Her  first  letter  from  her  mother 
informed  her  that  she  would  be  glad  to  hear  that  her  father  had  at  last  sold 
his  bonds  and  given  John  the  proceeds  to  buy  out  the  business  where  he  had 
slaved  so  long  as  a  clerk.  Sylvia  knew,  however,  under  what  unbearable 
pressure  her  poor  father  had  been  brought  to  yield ;  and  her  indignation  and 
pity  for  him  made  her  feel  at  first  as  if  she  never  wanted  to  go  into  the  house 
ao-ain.  Succeeding  letters  were  very  jubilant  and  happy ;  it  gave  his  mother 
so  much  pleasure  to  see  John  taking  his  place  as  became  him,  a  man  among 
men.  She  thought  the  business  must  be  nourishing,  for  John  had  a  little 
naphtha  launch  on  the  river,  in  which  he  went  to  town  now,  instead  of  travel- 


424  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

ing  with  all  the  dust  and  jar  of  the  railway.  Of  course,  of  course  there  had 
been  opposition,  the  letter  said,  for  his  father  was  one  of  those  men  who  never 
liked  innovation;  but  probably  he  would  soon  be  going  into  town  on  it  him- 
self. He  was  always  prognosticating  evil ;  any  one  would  think  John  was 
committing  an  unpardonable  extravagance  in  having  devised  a  healthier  way 
of  going  to  business  than  they  had  ever  known  before.  Mr.  Dexter  did  not 
approve  of  John's  new  horse,  either;  and  yet  any  one  could  see  that  the  horse 
was  as  gentle  as  a  woolly  lamb,  and  he  ate  apples  and  sugar  from  the  chil- 
dren's hands,  and  when  he  traveled  he  simply  flew. 

When  Sylvia  made  an  errand  to  her  father's  office,  she  found  him  as  anx- 
ous  as  she  had  expected.  But  it  would  do  no  good  for  her  to  go  home  with 
him  just  now ;  she  would  show  her  disapprobation  of  the  state  of  affairs  too 
plainly;  and  she  couldn't  if  she  would,  for  Aunt  Jeannette  was  ill  with  ty- 
phoid fever,  and,  of  course,  it  was  out  of  the  question  to  leave  her.  There 
was  really  a  pestilence  of  typhoid  in  the  town.  All  the  drinking  water  was 
drawn  from  a  river  that  passed  large  polluting  towns  and  tanneries,  and  every 
day  a  new  case  appeared,  till  there  was  almost  a  panic  in  the  place. 

Fortunately  for  Sylvia  she  was  one  of  those  creatures  so  full  of  vital 
strength  and  fire  that  fear  was  unknown  to  her;  and  so  well  had  she  nursed 
Aunt  Jeannette  that,  when  she  was  a  little  rested,  the  hard-pressed  physician 
begged  her  to  help  him  on  another  case.  And  so  it  chanced  that  she  went 
from  one  sick  bed  to  another,  and  presently  came  to  be  off ered  large  payments 
for  her  services;  and  in  view  of  her  apprehensions  concerning  John  and  her 
father's  unsecured  loan  to  him,  it  seemed  best  for  her  to  continue  both  earn- 
ing money  and  carrying  relief.  Harley  protested  that  she  would  wear  herself 
out ;  but  she  protested  in  return  that  she  was  well  and  young  and  strong,  and 
liked  it;  and  that  even  if  the  duty  had  not  been  set  so  plainly  before  her  in 
relation  to  the  sick  and  her  ability  to  help  them,  it  would  be  a  wanton  waste 
for  her  to  refuse  to  earn  the  money  thus  off  ered  her.  "Oh,  Harley!"  she  cried; 
"I  must  do  all  I  can  for  them.  For  when  I  think  of  the  poor  creatures  dying 
for  want  of  good  water,  murdered  by  bad  water,  and  remember  our  spring  in 
the  pasture  bubbling  up  fresh  and  pure  every  second,  I  feel  like  a  criminal ; 
as  if  I  kept  health  and  strength  all  to  myself ;  as  if  I,  and  not  the  spring,  were 
wasting  what  would  be  life  to  them." 

"Such  a  morbid  feeling  shows  that  you  are  tired  and  in  no  condition  to 
be  nursing  the  sick,"  said  Harley.  But  suddenly,  as  they  went  along  together 
— for  he  appointed  to  meet  her  almost  every  day  now  in  the  hour's  walk  al- 
lowed the  nurse  by  custom — his  face  flushed  and  flashed  with  a  sudden  thought 
like  the  passing  of  a  sunbeam.  "Will  you  give  me  permission  to  do  what  I 
please,  to  take  all  I  want  of  the  spring  water,  and  in  the  way  I  think  best?" 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


FROM  ONE  SICK  BED  TO  ANOTHER. 


"Theidea!' 
cried  Sylvia. 
"Permission,  in- 
deed! Isn't  what 
is  mine  yours?  ' 
And  they  passed 
to  more  purely 
personal  matters. 

"I  don't  know  if  you  are  aware,"  wrote  her  mother,  some  weeks  after- 
ward, "  that  Harley  Melton  is  meddling  with  the  spring  in  your  piece  of  pas- 
ture, as  you  call  it,  meddling  in  my  opinion  most  unwarrantably.  He  has 
had  men  there  scooping  it  out  and  curbing  it ;  and  he  has  rigged  an  unsightly 
derrick  there,  and  men  are  filling  great  glass  demijohns  by  the  wagonf ul.  And 
at  this  rate  there'll  be  no  spring  there  at  all  presently.  I  suppose  it  is  to  save 
himself  the  trouble  of  distilling  water  for  his  prescriptions — that  is  so  pure. 
I'm  sure  if  he  has  money  enough  to  hire  men  and  rig  derricks  and  all  that, 
and  cares  as  much  as  he  pretends  about  you,  he  had  better  lend  it  to  John, 
who  can't  sleep  nights  for  worrying  about  his  notes." 

Sylvia  was  too  busy  with  her  sick  and  dyjng  people  to  wonder  much 
about  the  burden  of  her  mother's  letter.  She  knew  that  whatever  Harley 
did  was  likely  to  be  right.  She  could  not  spare  the  time  to  go  and 
see  her  father  again;  she  could  not  get  the  time;  but  she  felt  oppressed 
with  fear  for  him,  and  she  laughed  a  little  bitterly  at  herself  to  think 
she  had  supposed  she  could  help  him  with  her  earnings,  when  a  whole  year 
of  them  would  not  amount  to  a  thousand  dollars.  But,  at  any  rate,  she 


426  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

was  glad  that  she  was  lifting  any  portion  of  expense  from  him,  be  it  ever  so 
small. 

It  was  some  weeks  afterward  that  when  she  went  out  for  her  morning 
walk  in  a  new  direction,  and  saw  great  posters  on  all  the  fences  and  telegraph 
poles,  "Drink  water  from  the  Sylvan  Spring  and  prevent  typhoid,"  sheunder- 
stood  with  a  double  thrill  of  joy — joy  for  themselves,  and  joy  for  the  sick — what 
Harley  was  doing.  And  when  she  met  him  driving  in  with  a  load  of  the  glass 
carboys  filled  with  Sylvan  Spring  water,  which  he  left  from  house  to  house,  be- 
fore going  to  his  headquarters  for  fresh  orders,  she  felt  as  if  he  were  really  an 
angel  of  the  Lord  in  mortal  guise.  And  he  held  out  his  hand  for  her  to  mount 
to  his  side,  and  she  rode  back  into  town  with  him,  feeling  as  a  devotee  might 
do  who  carried  holy  water  to  the  perishing  and  penitent. 

Sylvia  had  gone  back  to  her  Aunt  Jeannette's  for  a  short  rest  after  the 
hard  and  cruel  winter,  when,  one  bright  May  day,  her  father  came  to  see  her. 
John  had  failed;  and  all  that  Mr.  Dexter  had  saved  and  spared  in  the  long 
years  had  gone  into  the  gulf  with  the  money  of  the  other  creditors.  There 
were  no  assets  to  speak  of — a  few  notes,  the  remnants  of  an  ill-chosen  stock, 
the  horse  that  had  gone  lame,  the  disabled  naphtha  launch.  Slyvia  felt  as 
though  her  heart  would  break  when  she  saw  her  father's  despondency.  "I  don't 
blame  your  poor  mother,"  he  said.  "Love  is  a  good  fault.  It  was  her  love 
for  John,  and  her  belief  in  me.  She  thought  I  was  equal  to  any  trouble  that 
might  come,  superior  to  it;  but  even  I  supposed  John  had  some  capacity.  It's 
hard,  my  child,  to  begin  life  over  again  at  sixty." 

"I  don't  think  you  will  have  to  do  that,  Mr.  Dexter,"  said  Harley  who,  com- 
ing in  just  then,  had  heard  the  last  words.  "I  am  just  making  a  return  to 
my  chief;  and  I  am  sure  it  will  be  a  joy  to  Sylvia  to  replace  a  good  portion  of 
your  losses  by  indorsing  this  check  to  you." 

"Harley!" 

"I  have  deducted  all  the  expenses  and  my  own  commission,"  said  Harley. 
"You  will  see  by  the  schedules  that  we  supply  in  this  town  and  others  along 
the  route  and  on  the  further  side — for  the  typhoid  scare  is  widespread  now- 
more  than  a  thousand  families  with  the  Sylvan  Spring  water,  at  fifty  cents  a 
week.  Of  course  the  expenses  are  heavy ;  but  then  the  net  profit  is  heavy,  too. 
It  gives  Sylvia  and  me  enough  to  build  our  house  in  another  spot  at  some  dis- 
tance from  the  water-works,  a  pasture  of  mine.  And  if  you,  Mr.  Dexter,  will 
take  the  management  of  the  business  in  town — I  think  it  need  not  interfere 
with  your  present  arrangements;  and  John  will  oversee  the  teams — that  is 
quite  within  his  power;  I  can  attend  to  the  spring-house  until  the  time,  that 
is,  when  the  towns  take  the  works  off  our  hands  and  pay  us  fifty  or  a  hundred 
thousand  for  our  plant,  with  permanent  positions  in  the  business." 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  427 

"There  is  no  more  honest  poverty  in  ours,  papa,"  cried  Sylvia. 

"Harley!"  said  Mr.  Dexter;  "you  are  my  salvation." 

"Well,  sir,  you  can  reverse  the  thing  and  be  mine  by  giving  your  daugh- 
ter a  command  to  become  my  wife  here  and  now!" 

"Without  her  mother?" 

''Well,  papa,"  said  Sylvia,  blushing  rosy-red,  but  feeling  obliged  to  come 
to  Harley's  help,  "Aunt  Jeannette  would  do.  And  you  know  that  mamma 
has  a  great — a  great  faculty  for  obstruction.  I  think  she  will  be  so  relieved 
about  John  that  she  will  forgive  us.  And  we  will  make  her  a  wedding  present 
of  a  paid-up  mortgage  of  the  house." 

"You  are  a  nouvcau  riche,  Sylvia.  Harley  must  not  allow  you  to  be  too 
free  with  your  money." 

"Oh,  it  isn't  ours;  it  is  a  trust  the  dear  old  Mother  Earth  gives  us.  We 
are  to  be  happy  out  of  it,  and  to  make  every  one  else  happy.  And,  oh,  what 
happiness  it  is  to  bring  health  to  whole  towns  full  of  people!  Don't  you  re- 
member I  told  you  the  spring  was  full  of  sapphires  and  rubies  and  emeralds, 
Harley?  And  real  ones,  you  see,  papa!"  for  Harley  had  slipped  a  ring  on  her 
finger  some  little  time  before.  "Papa,  you  are  quite  another  person  already," 
she  cried,  pinning  on  her  hat  and  going  out  to  the  minister's  with  them  and 
her  Aunt  Jeannette. 

"Oh,  you  dear,  sweet,  confiding  old  Mother  Earth,"  Sylvia  exclaimed, 
kneeling  at  her  window  that  night,  and  looking  out  on  the  dark,  slumbering, 
champaign  country  behind  the  town,  "I  love  you  so!" 

"I  think,"  said  Harley,  "you  had  better  be  saying  how  you  love  me!" 

"That  goes  without  saying,"  she  replied,  leaning  back  her  head  on  his 
arm.  "  But  this  dear  earth — she  makes  us  so  happy  while  she  rolls  with  us 
about  the  sun  that  it  seems  to  me  now  only  a  happiness  to  think  of  the 
time  when  we  shall  be  a  part  of  her — just  brown  dust  together  in  her 
bosom!" 

"Oh,  but  a  long  way  off!"  he  cried,  folding  her  still  more  closely  in  his 
arms. 

It  was  at  about  the  same  hour  that  Mrs.  Dexter,  having  inspected  the  re- 
leased mortgage  and  the  gratifying  check,  had  coquettishly  picked  out  the  pink 
ribbons  of  her  cap  and  was  remarking  to  her  husband : 

"Well,  it  was  the  most  thoughtful  thing  Sylvia  ever  did — to  save  me  the 
fuss  of  a  wedding.  That  piece  of  pasture!  Is  John  to  have  a  salary — or  a 
commission?  A  salary  is  so  comfortable.  You  always  know  where  you  are 
with  a  salary.  It  has  to  be  paid.  Oh,  yes,  a  salary  is  the  best  thing;  I  have 
always  said  so.  Harley  Melton  is  turning  out  better  than  I  thought.  I  never 
said  there  was  any  harm  in  him ;  only  that  he  was  so  inefficient.  Still,  with 


428 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 


the  money  coming  in,  Sylvia  could  have  done  better.  She  could  have  married 
almost  any  one.  It  is  vexatious,  say  what  you  will,  to  have  an  outsider  like 
Harley  directing  family  affairs.  It  is  just  the  thing  for  John  himself  to  do; 
and  it  is  my  private  opinion  that  John  suggested  the  whole  business  in  the 
first  place.  He  always  said  that  water  was  pure.  John  is  so  full  of 
ideas!" 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  429 


CHAPTER  SIXTEENTH. 


Work. 

Laborare  est  orare. 

Books  or  work  or  healthful  play. 

—Dr.  Watts. 

And  blessed  are  the  horny  hands  of  toil. 

— /.  R.  Lowell. 

Men,  my  brothers,  men,  the  workers,  always  reaping  something  new. 

—  Tennyson. 

For  men  must  work  and  women  must  weep 
And  there's  little  to  earn  and  many  to  keep. 

— Charles  Kingsley. 

In  the  morning  when  thou  art  sluggish  at  rousing  thee  let  this  thought  be  present :  "I  am 
rising  to  a  man's  work." — Marcus  Aurelius. 

If  all  the  year  were  playing  holidays 
To  sport  would  be  as  tedious  as  to  work. 

— Shakespeare. 

Every  man  is  the  son  of  his  own  works. 

— Cervantes. 
By  the  work  one  knows  the  workman. 

— La  Fontaine. 

Man's  work  is  from  sun  to  sun, 
Woman's  work  is  never  done. 

— Old  Distich. 

As  necessary  a  stepping  stone  to  happiness  as  there  is  in  the  whole  world 
is  to  be  found  in  work — enough  work,  and  not  too  much.  When  we  murmur 
about  our  work,  we  seldom  reflect  how  much  more  pitiful  would  be  the  condi- 
tion of  the  most  laborious  among  us  if  we  were  suddenly  to  be  deprived  of  it. 
We  often  look  upon  it  as  a  burden,  when  it  is  in  reality  a  blessing  in  disguise. 
We  picture  to  ourselves  how  much  happier  we  should  be  without  it,  and  envy 
those  who  are  born  to  a  heritage  of  idleness,  when  we  should  be,  in  truth,  the 
most  wretched  beings  alive  could  we  exchange  places  with  them  for  a  day. 
What  an  angel  of  mercy  has  it  proved  to  many!  What  a  solace  for  vacant 
hours!  What  a  panacea  for  troubles,  sentimental  or  otherwise!  Did  not  John 
Bunyan  bless  it,  think  you,  in  Bedford  jail,  where  he  beguiled  the  time  with 


430  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

toiling  over  his  Pilgrim's  Progress?  Has  it  not  ministered  to  many  a 
mind  diseased,  plucked  from  the  heart  many  a  rooted  sorrow?  Is  it  not  the 
only  sure  antidote  to  ennui?  a  remedy  against  a  host  of  ills  to  which  flesh  and 
spirit  are  heir?  Has  it  not  rendered  us  oblivious  to  injuries  and  neglect? 

That  the  money  value  of  work  is  not  its  ultimate  charm  is  well  attested 
by  those  who,  having  been  hard  workers  for  the  greater  portion  of  their  lives, 
retire  from  business,  expecting  to  enjoy  themselves  and  their  hard-earned 
wealth,  but  rinding  the  weeks  and  months  heavy  upon  their  hands,  finally  re- 
sume their  old  habits  of  industry,  having  made  the  important  discovery  that 
they  had  been  enjoying  themselves  all  their  days;  that  their  true  contentment 
was  like  the  statue  hidden  in  the  marble  block — something  to  be  wrought  out 
by  toil;  that  work  was  the  only  talisman  against  low  spirits  and  hypochon- 
dria. We  rarely,  if  ever,  hear  busy  people  complaining  of  megrims;  they  do 
not  often  swell  the  number  of  suicides.  They  have  little  time  to  spare  for 
their  neighbors'  affairs,  since  the  sincere  worker  must  pin  his  mind  to  his 
work,  if  he  would  accomplish  anything  worth  dignifying  with  the  name,  and 
not  some  slop-shop  makeshift.  We  sometimes  feel  that  if  we  could  only 
choose  our  work  or  exchange  with  another  we  should  be  better  pleased  and 
more  successful ;  then  we  should  become  earnest  in  its  pursuit ;  then  should 
we  cease  to  slight  and  slander  it ;  then  would  our  efforts  be  as  spontaneous  as 
the  bird's  song.  But  is  it  not  wiser  for  us  to  do  honestly  that  which  falls  in  our 
way,  if  it  be  only  to  darn  stockings  or  to  scour  knives,  without  waiting  for  any- 
thing more  worthy  of  our  strength  or  talents?  Is  it  not  a  reproach  to  Him 
Who  assigns  it  to  suppose  it  a  mistake  and  something  beneath  our  abilities,  as 
well  as  a  vanity  in  us,  to  imagine  ourselves  capable  of  more  ambitious  tasks? 
And  are  we  not  assured  that 

"Who  sweeps  a  room  as  by  God's  laws, 
Makes  that  and  the  action  fine?  " 


Mrs.  Browning's  Word. 


Perhaps  Mrs.  Browning's  noble  sonnet  says  in  small  compass  the  best 
there  is  to  say  of  this : 

"What  are  we  set  on  earth  for?     Say,  to  toil; 

Nor  seek  to  leave  thy  tending  of  the  vines 

For  all  the  heat  o'  the  day,  till  it  declines, 
And  Death's  wild  curfew  shall  from  work  assoil. 
God  did  anoint  thee  with  His  odorous  oil 

To  wrestle,  not  to  reign,  till  He  assigns 

All  thy  tears  over,  like  pure  crystallines 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  43i 

For  younger  fellow-workers  of  the  soil 

To  wear  for  amulets.     So  others  shall 

Take  patience,  labor,  to  their  heart  and  hand, 
From  thy  heart,  and  thy  hand,  and  thy  brave  cheer, 

And  God's  grace  fructify  through  thee  to  all. 

The  least  flower  with  a  brimming  cup  may  stand 
And  share  its  dewdrop  with  another  near." 


The  Value  of  Work  to  Character. 

In  another  consideration,  one  perhaps  more  selfish,  there  are  few  things 
cf  so  much  value  to  the  character  as  work  and  the  habit  of  work.  This,  the 
pleasure-lover,  the  idler,  the  very  young  and  thoughtless  may  be  inclined  to 
doubt,  but  advancing  years  will  teach  them  the  truth  of  the  statement.  I  re- 
member having  heard  Emma  Stebbins,  the  sculptress,  and  the  friend  of  Char- 
lotte Cushman — and  both  of  these  illustrious  women  had  been  ardent  workers 
— once  say  to  a  young  person  who  complained  that  she  hated  work,  and  would 
like  to  loll  a  year  or  two  on  rose  leaves:  "Ah,  my  dear,  I  hope  the  time  will 
never  come  to  you  when  you  will  be  thankful  for  work!" 

It  may  be  a  vastly  more  agreeable  thing  for  a  season  to  lounge  in  the 
sunshine,  to  sit  half  buried  in  luxurious  ease,  and  read  a  novel  that  takes  us 
out  of  our  humdrum  existence  and  into  a  life  inviting  as  Elysian  fields,  to  fold 
our  hands,  doing  nothing  but  waiting  for  something  to  turn  up;  but  all  that 
sort  of  thing,  pursued  as  a  profession,  grows  infinitely  more  tiresome  than 
the  most  tiring  work.  For  there  is  occasionally  an  immense  difference  in  the 
significance  of  the  two  words,  tiresome  and  tiring,  the  one  often  implying  a 
fatigue  of  the  spirit  which  dissipates  all  its  forces,  and  the  other  a  wholesome 
fatigile  of  the  body,  to  be  refreshed  by  rest  or  sleep;  no  rest  or  sleep  refreshes 
us  when  a  thing  is  simply  tiresome,  for  the  tiresomeness  is  monotonous,  un- 
derlying and  always  there.  In  fact,  if  we  do  not  want  pleasure  and  ease  to  fall 
on  us  so  that  we  would  at  last  find  ourselves  glad  to  dig  or  scrub  for  a  change 
from  the  soft  condition,  we  shall  have  to  learn  to  take  that  pleasure  and  ease 
only  as  the  reward  of  labor,  as  a  relaxation  really  earned  by  effort,  a  some- 
thing that  has  become  ours  by  personal  right;  and  we  shall  discover  it  to  be 
then  as  much  more  delicious  in  its  sweetness  as  the  honey  of  the  bee,  with  its 
wild-flower  tang  and  flavor,  is  more  delicious  than  the  baker's  treacle  with  its 
dull  insipidity. 

Nor  is  work,  of  whatever  sort  it  may  be,  merely  desirable  in  this  way  of 
exercise  and  sport  to  the  healthy  muscle  and  healthy  brain  maintaining  sound 
condition  or  creating  it;  but  it  is  a  blessing  even  if  in  disguise  by  means  cf 
its  taking  us  for  a  while  as  completely  out  of  ourselves  as  the  most  enthralling 


432  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

romance  could ;  for  as  we  have  seen  we  can  seldom  do  our  work  without  think- 
ing of  that  work;  that  which  can  be  done  without  thinking  seems  to  have 
little  of  the  sacredness  of  work  about  it  and  to  be  really  only  a  hybrid  between 
work  and  play ;  and  if  we  are  thinking  of  the  work  then  certainly  we  are  not 
thinking  of  the  other  matters  that  environ  us  or  overwhelm  us  and  by  their 
monotony  would  furrow  ridges  in  the  brain  were  that  possible.  We  come 
back  to  ourselves  with  the  interest  of  those  that  have  been  away  from  home 
and  we  are  better  able  to  meet  our  circumstances  by  the  new  view  we  get  of 
them  through  our  absence  and  return.  If  we  are  of  that  great  number  whom 
sorrow  has  marked  for  its  own,  who  are  surrounded  by  an  atmosphere  of 
teasing  trouble,  or  who  have  met  with  some  great  calamity,  then  how  great  a 
resource  shall  we  find  this  absorbing  work  which  we  once  so  scorned !  For 
the  time,  at  least,  the  stinging  throng  of  annoyances  is  escaped,  the  pressure  of 
the  great  calamity  is  lifted ;  we  find  ourselves  with  a  new  anxiety,  that  of 
doing  our  work  well,  of  expressing  our  thought  perfectly,  of  achieving  suc- 
cess in  the  direction  we  have  aimed.  Only  those  who  have  suffered  may  per- 
haps know  the  full  extent  of  the  blessing  that  work  is  when  it  comes  to  absorb 
them  from  their  grief ;  yet  they  who  are  loaded  with  all  the  pleasures  which  the 
world  has  to  give  will  usually  find  that  it  has  one  thing  more  to  give  in  the 
enkindling  and  revivifying  of  work  pursued  in  earnest. 


All  Creation  Works. 

But  even  if  work  comes  not  as  a  blessing  per  se,  and  has  to  be  considered 
as  part  of  the  primal  curse  in  which  man  was  bidden  to  earn  his  bread  in  the 
sweat  of  his  brow,  and  which  the  minority  of  mankind  seem  to  think  did  not 
include  themselves,  what  right  has  any  created  thing  to  wish  to  evade  it?  Is 
there  such  a  thing  known  as  absolute  rest  among  all  the  powers  and  agencies 
of  the  cosmic  universe,  the  very  names  of  power  and  agency  implying  action  ? 
Are  not  the  four  elements  constant  at  their  never-ceasing,  never-resting, 
always  interchanging  labor  ?  Does  one  drop  of  water  pause  in  the  roll  of  the 
ocean,  one  tongue  of  flame  hang  suspended  in  the  fire,  one  cloud  stay  motion- 
less in  the  wide  heavens,  one  atom  of  the  brown  earth  cease  to  disintegrate, 
to  moulder,  to  crumble  and  change  for  its  new  state?  Js  not  the  seed  ever 
germinating,  the  flower  ever  blooming,  the  fruit  ever  ripening,  the  wind  ever 
blowing,  vapor  rising,  sunshine  falling,  rivers  running?  Do  the  planets  rest 
in  their  courses,  the  earth  in  its  revolution,  the  tides  in  their  great  swing- 
ing? All  the  atoms  and  impulsions  of  nature  are  constantly  rendering  their 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  433 

tithe  of  service;  and  why,  then,  should  any  one  of  us,  as  much  an  atom  of 
nature  as  stock  or  stone  is,  and  moved  by  nature's  quickening  as  much  as  tide 
or  sap — why  should  we  halt  at  our  work  and  bemoan  our  fate  that  we  have 
our  share  of  work  to  do?  Even  while  we  bemoan  ourselves  the  work  of  the 
universe  goes  on  unceasingly  in  our  own  bodies  and  the  changes  that  bring 
on  old  age  daily  within  us  and  about  us.  There  is  something  marvelously 
strange  in  view  of  the  industry  of  all  the  natural  forces  that  the  human  race, 
or  any  portion  of  it,  should  be  the  only  thing  to  rebel  at  the  necessity  of  labor, 
in  some  degree  at  least. 

But  apart  from  all  fancies  of  the  kind  it  is  a  fact  that  there  has  never  been 
anything  of  moment  in  the  world  accomplished  without  work.  What  an  im- 
mensity of  it  must  have  been  done  to  complete  those  conquests  over  the  raw 
material  of  the  earth  in  the  ancient  desert  ruins,  temples  and  aqueducts  in  the 
modern  tunneling  of  mountains  and  stretching  of  railroads  across  continents! 
"The  money  that  you  pay  us  for  our  labor  we  send  home,"  said  the  Chinese 
to  some  agitator  against  them,  "but  the  work  remains  for  you."  And  so  the 
act  of  work  remains  in  its  effect  upon  the  character  of  the  worker.  He  is  up 
and  doing  when  others  sleep,  and  not  only  winning  his  measure  of  success 
thereby,  but  keeping  himself  from  rusting  out,  polishing  every  faculty, 
stretching  every  nerve,  bright  and  alert  for  the  next  thing,  whatever  it  be, 
the  business  of  this  world  or  that  of  the  other — the  other  upon  which  he  may 
some  morning  wake  surprised — surprised  to  find  work  waiting  for  him  in  the 
new  horizons,  and  himself  all  the  better  fitted  for  it  that  he  did  no  shirking 
here. 

It  often  seems  a  regrettable  matter  of  concern  when  we  observe  the  man- 
ner in  which  a  large  number  of  subordinates — we  can  hardly  call  them 
workers  since  they  would  avoid  any  reason  for  being  called  so — complain  of 
the  necessity  that  compels  them  to  their  daily  tasks.  One  thing  of  their  fu- 
ture is  certain :  no  individual  of  those  complaining  is  a  person  who  will  ever, 
as  the  vernacular  goes,  "amount  to  anything."  For  look  at  their  chiefs  and 
employers ;  there  is  no  clerk  in  any  leading  business  of  the  country  who  works 
as  indefatigably  as  the  head  of  his  house  does,  so  long  as  he  remains  in  the 
business;  up  betimes  in  the  morning  it  may  be  while  the  clerk  is  still  stretch- 
ing and  yawning  and  hesitating  on  his  pillow ;  and  the  last  perhaps  to  leave 
the  counting-room  at  night.  It  is  quite  possible  that  in  such  an  employer's 
case  there  is  too  much  business  done  out  of  the  superabundance  of  activity ; 
but  it  is  done,  the  profit  and  reward  of  it  is  reaped ;  and  while  he  bemoans 
himself  that  he  must  work,  the  subordinate  will  never  be  reaping  any  other 
profit  or  reward  than  his  meagre  salary,  which  he  evidently  works  hard  to  get 
without  work. 


434  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

Conscience  in  the  Work. 

Whatever  the  work  is,  it  is  always  to  be  done  with  a  conscience.  In  the 
struggle  not  only  for  superiority,  but  for  existence,  and  the  making  of  exist- 
ence comfortable  if  not  also  beautiful,  with  which  this  country  and  this  age 
are  only  too  well  acquainted,  it  is  said  that  workers  have  no  time  to  take  con- 
science into  counsel,  and  to  do  their  stent  as  if  doing  it  to  the  stern  judgment 
of  the  fullest  light  that  might  ever  fall  upon  it. 

Yet  if  all  workers,  and  in  that  sense  all  individuals,  realized  the  great 
doctrine  of  consequences,  and  the  manner  in  which  every  circumstance  is  in- 
terwoven with  every  other  circumstance  that  has  gone  before  or  is  to  come 
after,  conscience  would  never  be  thrust  out  of  sight,  but  would  be  the  chosen 
friend,  and  given  the  place  of  honor  at  one's  right  hand. 

The  careless,  happy  spinner  slights  her  thread ;  the  rope  spun  with  that 
thread  breaks,  and  the  man  it  held  falls  down  the  shaft ;  then  a  family  is  left 
fatherless  and  destitute  children  grow  up  to  crime  and  shame;  theft,  murder 
and  the  gallows  hang  on  those  strands  of  thread,  sighs,  tears  and  agony,  deso- 
lated affection,  betrayed  love,  crime  multiplying  crime  with  the  rapid  growth 
of  a  fungus,  a  country  its  prey.  If  conscience  had  sat  by  that  spinner,  that 
contingent  amount  of  harm,  at  least,  with  its  far-widening  and  long-reaching 
circles,  would  never  have  been  done  the  world.  For  there  is  no  action  that 
does  not  entail  its  consequences,  not  on  the  actor  alone,  but  on  all  in  contact 
with  the  actor,  with  the  air  one  might  declare  that  the  lifting  of  the  arm  to  do 
the  deed  disturbs,  and  all  whom  that  air  touches. 


Work  Here  and  Abroad. 

We  often  hear  complaints  that  this  and  that  sort  of  work  is  not  done  so 
well  here  as  in  England,  or  France,  or  Switzerland;  and  allowing  it  to  be 
true,  one  marvels  why  liberty  and  all  the  civilizing  influences  that  surround 
the  worker  in  this  country  should  have  the  effect  of  making  his  work  poor  and 
slovenly  and  unfaithful.  Yet,  if  the  statement  is  really  true  it  is  doubtless 
because  in  the  older  lands  the  workman  has  no  expectation  of  ever  rising 
above  his  work,  and  his  only  hope  is  in  its  perfection ;  while  here,  on  the  con- 
trary, every  worker  knows  certain  of  his  possibilities,  and  looks  at  the  future 
through  them  and  not  through  his  handiwork,  as  he  should  do;  he  does  his 
handiwork  only  in  the  interim  before  he  carries  out  his  possibilities. 

Perhaps  the  complainants  have  done  their  own  work  well  in  complaining; 
or  perhaps  they  have  been  too  hasty  in  demanding  more  than  one  century  and 
a  quarter  of  national  life  has  had  time  to  effect,  and  we  may  be  just  entering 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  435 

on  the  ripened  fruit  of  those  years  of  liberty.  Nothing  speaks  better  for  our 
later  conscientious  endeavor  than  the  appearance  of  much  work  at  the  various 
exhibitions,  the  fact  that  to-day  many  of  our  wares  find  more  demand  and 
better  market  than  the  foreign,  and  than  so  little  a  thing,  as  at  first  glance  it 
may  seem,  as  the  discovery  by  a  woman  of  the  secret  of  the  lovely  Limoges 
ware,  so  that  its  foreign  maker  mistook  her  work  for  that  of  his  own  people. 


Love  of  Art  Equaling  Conscience. 

Sometimes,  indeed,  the  European  worker's  love  of  art  answers  for  con- 
science. Doubtless  that  old  Demetrius  of  Ephesus  who  made  silver  shrines 
for  Diana  did  his  work  faultlessly.  But  it  was  another  sort  of  conscience  that 
animated  Yoshiaki,  the  sword-maker  of  Osaka,  in  Japan.  "His  idea  was  that 
having  been  bred  up  to  a  calling  which  trades  in  life  and  death,  he  was  bound, 
so  far  as  in  him  lay,  to  atone  for  this  by  seeking  to  alleviate  the  suffering 
which  is  in  the  world ;  and  he  carried  out  this  principle  to  the  extent  of  im- 
poverishing himself.  No  neighbor  ever  appealed  to  him  in  vain  for  help  in 
tending  the  sick  or  in  burying  the  dead.  No  beggar  or  leper  was  ever  turned 
from  his  door  without  receiving  some  mark  of  his  bounty.  Nor  was  his 
scrupulous  honesty  less  remarkable  than  his  charity.  Whilst  other  smiths 
were  in  the  habit  of  receiving  large  sums  by  counterfeiting  the  marks  of 
famous  makers  of  antiquity,  he  never  turned  out  a  weapon  which  bore  any 
other  mark  than  his  own.  Without  knowing  it  Yoshiaki  was  a  sound  Chris- 
tian." And  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  man  did  his  work  better,  made 
his  blades  keener  and  lighter,  because  his  conscience  was  so  active  that  it 
caused  him  thus  to  atone  for  the  making  of  swords  at  all. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  makers  of  swords,  and  of  ropes,  and  of  artistic  ob- 
jects, that  need  their  conscience  in  their  work;  the  domestic  worker  needs  it 
just  as  much,  if  not  more.  The  child  at  her  practicing,  the  girl  who  sets  a 
stitch  in  her  darning,  the  maid  who  trims  the  lamp  for  the  night,  the  man 
who  shovels  the  snow  from  the  door,  the  mistress  who  directs  the  servants, 
and  who  ruins  them  as  well  as  her  housekeeping  by  neglecting  to  keep  them 
up  to  the  proper  point  in  their  duties — all  these  need  conscience  at  their  side 
as  well  as  the  weaver  whose  badly  woven  sail,  splitting  with  the  bellying 
wind,  as  the  carpenter  whose  badly  driven  bolt,  hurl  a  ship  to  her  destruc- 
tion. These  stand  in  danger  of  hurling  more  than  a  ship  to  destruction,  one 
might  imagine — of  ruining  all  the  comfort,  the  peace,  and  happiness  of  a 
home,  by  the  want  of  this  conscience  yoked  with  needle  and  brain,  eyesight 

and  will.  * 

For  this  very  "conscience  that  makes  cowards  of  us  all,"  once  admitted 


436  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

to  our  company  makes  us  afraid  to  slight  our  work,  makes  us  feel  the  conse- 
quences that  come  from  badly  baked  bread,  from  poorly  aired  beds,  from  loose 
buttons,  from  strings  not  renewed  in  season,  from  unwhipped  seams  in  our 
sewing,  from  stitches  dropped  in  our  knitting,  from  children  unreproved  at 
the  moment  of  a  fault,  from  servants  allowed  to  commit  the  second  time  the 
error  they  made  before,  since  nowhere  has  this  useful  conscience  greater  op- 
portunity for  play  than  in  the  work  of  the  housekeeper — work  that  begins  with 
the  first  breath  she  draws  beneath  the  roof  of  the  home  that  she  undertakes 
to  care  for,  that  ceases  neither  by  day  nor  night  till  she  draws  the  last  breath, 
and  is  only  made  systematic,  and  thus  as  easy  as  the  breath  itself,  by  the  aid 
of  this  bosom  friend  and  counsellor. 


Those  Who  Are  Down  on  Their  Luck. 

But  not  only  concerning  his  work  will  you  hear  the  idle  and  the  listless 
worker  fret  his  soul,  but  of  something  that  he  calls  his  luck.  He  is  one  of 
those  people  who  never  are  "in  luck."  These  people  feel  that  if  they  were 
not  born  under  an  unlucky  star  it  was  because  a  wandering  comet,  yet  more 
baleful,  was  in  the  ascendant.  They  made  at  the  beginning,  they  might 
suppose,  some  one  of  those  infinitesimal  errors  which  in  the  course  of  a  life- 
long calculation  widen  out  into  the  logarithmic  figures. 

They  came  into  the  world  behind  time,  they  would  tell  you,  and  have 
always  been  in  pursuit  of  it  and  never  catching  up.  They  were  born  just  too 
late  for  a  legacy,  they  die  just  too  late  for  the  life-insurance  which  happens  to 
expire  first.  Their  piece  of  bread  is  sure  to  fall  and  always  on  the  buttered 
side;  their  dear  gazelles  are  sure  to  die;  if  they  think  they  can  play  comedy, 
a  compelling  fate  thrusts  them  into  tragedy;  they  would  like  to  write  poetrv, 
but  are  obliged  to  make  a  living  by  plain  prose ;  if  they  have  a  chance  in  an 
oil  well,  it  runs  nothing  but  mud  and  water;  if  they  have  a  silver  mine,  it 
turns  out  a  false  lead ;  if  they  dabble  in  stocks,  it  is  only  to  burn  their  fingers ; 
all  their  bulls  are  beared,  all  their  swans  are  geese,  there  are  seven  Fridays  in 
every  week  of  their  lives,  and  all  of  them  are  black  Fridays,  so  black  that  they 
are  blue.  On  the  wedding  journeys  of  these  worthies  nobody  has  a  slipper 
to  throw  after  them ;  horseshoes  never  lie  in  their  path ;  let  them  get  up 
never  so  early  in  the  'morning  to  catch  their  worm,  an  earlier  bird  has  been 
before  them.  The  blind  beggar  on  the  corner  always  sees  them,  when  their 
pockets  are  empty  and  a  charming  girl  is  their  companion,  before  he  sees  any- 
body else;  the  confidence  man  always  selects  them  for  victims;  if  they 
travel,  they  are  the  Jonahs  of  the  journey;  if  they  stay  at  home,  it  is  to  see 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  437 

the  folly  of  not  having  gone  abroad ;  their  brothers  never  learn  to  swim,  and 
sail  round  the  world  in  safety ;  they  learn  every  trick  of  the  water,  to  be 
drowned  in  their  own  bath-tub ;  regardless  of  the  economies,  other  people  may 
put  bacon  in  the  engine  fires  and  sit  on  the  valve,  and  nothing  happens;  but 
these  people  will  not  only  be  blown  up  by  the  steam  of  their  own  tea-kettle, 
but  will  have  to  eat  their  greens  without  bacon.  No  contagious  disease  goes 
a-begging  for  the  want  of  them  to  take  it,  and  always  at  the  most  inauspicious 
season;  their  good  crop  and  their  neighbor's  famine  never  come  together;  if 
they  make  a  corner  in  cream,  there  is  always  a  thunder-storm  on  hand  to 
sour  it;  in  short,  whatever  they  do,  they  will  have  reason  to  wish  they  had 
done  the  other  thing;  they  are  so  invariably  out  of  joint  with  the  times  and 
seasons  of  prosperity  that  if  a  fool's  cap  be  thrown  into  the  crowd  where  they 
are,  theirs  is  the  head  it  falls  on,  while  they  are  led  to  declare  that  if 'they  had 
been  born  hatters,  other  people  would  have  been  born  without  heads;  and 
they  are  thankful  for  but  one  thing  in  the  world,  and  that  is  that  they  were 
not  born  a  pair  of  twins. 

It  may  have  been  to  this  strangely  infelicitous  class  that  those  wretched 
women  of  the  French  Revolution  belonged  who,  when  one  tyrant  went  down 
and  before  another  came  to  the  top,  were  taken  from  the  prison  to  the  guillo- 
tine by  mere  routine.  For  such  a  fate  as  that  would  seem  something  to  be 
avoided  neither  by  wit  nor  learning,  and  only  to  have  come  through  a  natural 
alienation  from  luck,  an  inherent  hostility  to  happiness.  But  if  we  admit  the 
existence  of  luck  or  of  ill  luck  at  all,  certainly  these  and  such  as  these  are  the 
only  ones  who  can  claim  any  striking  disagreement  with  it. 

But  the  wretched  individuals  who  pride  themselves  on  being  so  invaria- 
bly unfortunate  never  attribute  any  of  their  misfortunes  to  their  rashness  or 
to  their  procrastination,  to  their  indolence  or  to  their  meddlesomeness,  to  their 
pusillanimity  or  to  their  overplus  of  pluck,  to  their  maladroitness  or  to  the 
element  omitted  in  their  combinations ;  they  neither  reproach  others  nor  them- 
selves— it  is  always  and  merely  their  luck.  Luck  is  the  divinity  that  shapes 
their  ends ;  and  if  we  will  accept  a  new  reading  of  the  old  passage,  is  the 
divinity  that  shapes  their  ends  rough — hew  them  how  they  will !  "Just  my 
luck,"  is  the  shibboleth  they  use  on  all  occasions,  till  other  people  adopt  their 
own  view  of  themselves,  and  leave  them  out  of  their  schemes  and  out  of 
their  parties,  as  persons  with  whom  it  is  not  best  to  attempt  fine  undertakings, 
till  the  unlucky  ones  again  cry  out  against  their  treatment  as  a  fresh  mani- 
festation of  the  injustice  of  Providence,  and  against  themselves  as  nothing  but 
the  fools  of  fortune. 

It  has  sometimes  occurred  to  us  that  a  possible  reason  of  many  of  the 
woes  of  these  poor  creatures  is  that  they  are  completely  out  of  time  and  place, 


438  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

they  do  not  belong  to  this  generation  or  to  this  era;  they  were  unlucky  at  the 
outset,  in  that  they  reached  this  planet  some  thousands  of  years  after  all  their 
kindred  souls  had  passed  away.  They  belonged  to  the  times  cf  the  augurs ; 
to  the  times  when  adventures  were  undertaken  by  the  direction  of  the  smoke 
of  sacrifice  or  the  position  of  the  entrails  of  animals ;  to  the  time  when  For- 
tune had  her  altars,  and  men  invoked  good  luck  with  burnt-offerings,  and 
poured  libations  to  prevent  its  opposite ;  to  the  epoch  of  superstition  between 
those  two  great  flights  of  birds,  one  of  which  directed  Romulus  to  Rome  and 
the  other  directed  Columbus  to  America.  They  are  still  the  devotees  of  small 
credulity,  and  certainly  are  foreign  to  the  age  and  the  latitudes  of  civilization. 
It  is  not,  of  course,  impossible  that,  in  all  the  complications  of  the  innum- 
erable threads  that  hold  the  worlds  in  order,  there  should  be  some  found  run- 
ning at  cross-purposes  through  unwise  human  intervention,  that  there  should 
be  born  individuals  the  currents  of  whose  lives  may  run  counter  to  the  great 
currents  of  the  universe;  but  since  there  is  a  deep  and  everlasting  law  to  con- 
trol the  things  of  creation,  and  reconcile  disturbances,  and  a  wise  disposer  of 
events,  such  variations  are,  to  say  the  least,  unlikely;  and  it  seems  to  us, 
after  all,  about  time  for  a  general  declaration  of  disbelief  in  the  existence  of 
any  such  thing  as  ill  luck.  "It  is  not  in  our  stars,  but  in  ourselves,  that  we 
are  underlings,"  the  great  poet  of  humanity  tells  us,  and  reason  confesses  the 
truth  of  the  statement.  The  person  who  is  in  earnest  is  never  unlucky. 
This  is  a  world  of  equations  and  equivalents,  and  every  serious  effort  has  its 
balancing  power  of  success. 

Rest  After  Work. 

And  when  one  has  worked  all  one  will  or  can,  there  conies  usually  the 
recompense  of  toil,  and  then  comes  a  measure  of  rest.  To  those  whose  toil 
has  brought  them  the  means  to  do  so  there  is  no  more  delightful  rest  to 
be  had  than  in  a  short  season  of  travel  and  of  making  one's  self  acquainted 
with  the  world.  It  is  singular  that  there  seems  to  be  no  such  rest  to  the 
wearied  mind  and  nerves  as  that  which  travel  brings,  although  it  may  some- 
times fatigue  the  body. 

The  Rest  of  Travel. 

Perhaps  it  is  on  the  same  principle  that  a  new  attitude  is  often  restful, 
bringing  into  use  another  set  of  muscles,  and  letting  those  that  have  been  long 
exerted  take  a  season  of  relaxation.  For  the  mind  that  has  fallen  into  a  rou- 
tine, and  worked  too  long  in  a  rut,  finds  itself  flaccid  as  a  string  that  has  been 
stretched  too  far,  and  it  receives  benefit  from  another  sort  of  exertion  and  in 


IHIIl       III!  "i',  III  i  II  .,!.   .; ...   .'  .      ;;'  ..'.  •   •    rj.':..        ::.'•  •  .. _ 


440  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

a  different  direction.  One  would  suppose  that  all  the  rapid  changes  and 
novelties  met  and  the  bodily  fatigues  undergone  in  travel  would  themselves 
be  exhausting,  and  that,  if  one  wanted  mental  rest,  one  could  secure  it  better 
at  home.  But  it  is  well  known  that  precisely  the  opposite  is  true,  and  that 
most  physicians  who  have  nervous  patients,  or  those  threatened  with  derange- 
ment of  nerves  or  brain,  order  travel,  as  they  might  order  a  narcotic  or  a 
stimulant,  sure  of  its  beneficial  result. 

Certainly  this  is  a  delightful  medicament;  and  how  could  one  better  har- 
monize the  right  and  the  delectable  than  in  obeying  such  prescriptions,  and 
taking  up  one's  bed  and  walking,  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  if  need  be,  and  not 
forgetting  to  reward  the  prescribing  physician  by  seeing  everything  and  en- 
joying the  whole  of  it.  One  can  stay  at  home  and  take  nauseous  doses,  doubt- 
ful if  one  is  to  be  better  at  the  end  than  in  the  beginning ;  but  who  would  not 
rather  take  a  dose  of  moonlight  in  Vienna,  city  of  mirroring,  a  dose  of  the 
ruins  of  the  Alhambra,  with  a  run  over  to  Tangier  to  heighten  the  flavor; 
who  would  not  make  an  exertion  to  see  that  there  was  no  error  made  in  the 
compounding  of  the  prescription  of  a  dahabeeyah  on  the  Nile,  and  rest  under 
the  shadow  of  Philse ;  would  not  gladly  swallow  such  a  bolus  as  a  summer  on 
the  ^Egean  Islands,  in  the  Engadine,  in  the  Trossachs,  at  the  North  Cape — 
and  feel  that  the  old  saying  of  "See  Rome  and  die"  in  such  case  is  trans- 
formed into  "See  Rome  and  live"? 


The  Mind  in  Travel. 

But,  besides  rest  and  medicine  to  tired  nerves,  is  there  anything  much 
more  elevating  and  stimulating  to  the  mental  processes  than  well-conducted 
travel?  Does  it  not  enlarge  the  mind  as  well  as  the  sympathies,  and  tend  to 
give  us  a  wider  scope  in  every  way,  and  more  active  intellectual  energy  than 
we  had  before?  "To  abstract  the  mind  from  all  local  emotion  would  be  im- 
possible if  it  were  endeavored,  and  would  be  foolish  if  it  were  possible,"  says 
a  great  writer.  "Whatever  withdraws  us  from  the  power  of  our  senses,  what- 
ever makes  the  past,  the  distant,  or  the  future  predominate  over  the  present, 
advances  us  in  the  dignity  of  thinking  beings.  Far  from  me  and  from  my 
friends  be  such  frigid  philosophy  as  may  conduct  us  indifferent  and  unmoved 
over  any  ground  which  has  been  dignified  by  wisdom,  bravery,  or  virtue. 
The  man  is  little  to  be  envied  whose  patriotism  would  not  gain  fervor  upon 
the  plain  of  Marathon,  or  whose  piety  would  not  grow  warmer  among  the 
ruins  of  lona. "  If  this  be  true,  it  is  no  marvel  that  our  wishes  turn  so 
ardently  to  that  dark  side  of  the  earth  unknown  to  us  as  the  dark  side  of  the 


ASCENT  OF  MONT  BLANC 


(440 


442  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

moon,  since  for  all  that  books  of  travel  may  tell  us,  no  imagination,  even  by 
their  help,  is  vivid  enough  to  paint  the  whole  picture  as  man  and  nature  may 
have  made  it.  Whoever  pictured  to  himself  the  unseen  home  of  a  friend  as  it 
really  is,  on  this  side  of  the  street,  with  this  furnishing,  this  atmosphere,  this 
character?  and  how,  then,  should  all  the  travelers'  tales  of  all  the  travelers 
in  existence  give  us  in  our  mind  that  clear  view  which  our  actual  eyes  shall 
have  strike  them  like  a  revelation  as  we  look  at  the  Parthenon,  at  York  Min- 
ster, at  Freiburg  spire,  at  Mont  Blanc  rosy  in  the  sunrise,  at  the  Campagna  in 
an  autumn  morning,  at  Rome,  and  all  the  ghosts  of  the  Old  World  rising  with 
it  to  salute  us?  Let  them  content  themselves  with  books  of  travel  who  can  do 
no  better  than  sit  at  home  and  turn  the  pages ;  but  those  of  us  whose  kindly 
doctor  orders  change  will  be  only  too  glad  to  borrow  of  Puck's  wizardry, 
made  matter  of  fact  through  electricity,  and  put  a  girdle  round  the  earth  in 
forty  minutes  in  the  shape  of  telegraphic  messages  from  Land's  End  to  No 
Man's  Land.  And  when  we  come  back  to  humdrum  life  again,  and  all  its 
duties,  what  wilder  wizardry  shall  we  make  every  time  we  shut  our  eyes,  and 
the  picture,  the  person,  the  scene,  starts  up  vividly  as  a  fire  in  the  night, 
drawn  clearly  on  the  brain,  an  everlasting  wealth  in  the  memory. 

It  is  true  that  this  kind  of  rest  and  change  and  medicament  takes  a  great 
deal  of  money  out  of  the  country,  and  enriches  foreign  lands  at  our  expense, 
and  that  the  political  economists  strike  and  spare  not  a  great  deal  of  gratui- 
tous growling  in  relation  to  the  subject.  But  does  it  really  do  no  more  than 
enrich  other  countries  to  the  loss  of  this?  Does  it  really  bring  nothing  back 
of  as  much  value,  to  say  the  least,  as  the  money  it  took  out?  Is  there  no 
wealth  to  a  country  in  the  experience  of  its  citizens,  in  their  education,  their 
acquirements,  their  familiarity  with  the  works  of  greatness  of  whatever  sort? 
Are  values  only  to  be  found  in  raw  material,  in  so  much  wheat,  so  much  gold, 
so  much  cotton  ?  To  my  thinking,  what  the  traveler  brings  home,  stamped 
with  fresh  impression,  is  coin  for  currency,  capable  of  being  of  infinitely  more 
use  to  the  country  than  the  trivial  dollars  and  cents  that  he  took  out  of  it. 
He  has  seen  the  best  that  art  has  done,  if  not  the  best  it  will  do ;  he  has  seen 
the  ruins  of  dead  empires,  and  the  workings  of  existing  ones ;  he  has  seen  this 
one  and  that  of  the  famous  people  of  the  earth ;  he  has  learned,  if  he  has  wit, 
a  part  of  the  lessons  that  the  Old  World  has  to  teach  the  New,  and  that  are 
seldom  learned  except  by  actual  contact.  He  brings  home  to  a  new  land, 
with  vast  untrodden  and  untraveled  tracts  of  country,  almost  without  monu- 
ments, and  with  art,  however  high  in  individual  achievement,  but  little  be- 
yond its  infancy  so  far  as  the  general  public  is  concerned,  tradition,  knowledge, 
culture,  and  as  good  as  all  the  rest,  acquaintance  with  what  it  should  avoid  in 
its  newness,  since  its  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  are  but  a  babyhood  beside 


444  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

the  years  of  the  ancient  kingdoms  of  the  earth.  Every  traveler  who  comes 
home  to  us,  still  regarding  the  institutions  of  his  own  country  as  sacred 
things,  and  not  denationalized  by  admiration  of  the  admirable  things  of  other 
lands,  nor  dazzled  by  the  glittering  of  crowns  and  coronets,  still  remembering 
that  of  all  good  things  liberty  is  the  best  thing,  can  only  contribute  to  our 
real  wealth  by  adding  to  us,  as  a  people,  appreciation  of  those  advantages  that 
come  with  later  growth,  each  individual  doing  his  share  toward  the  leavening 
of  the  lump. 

The  Reader  in  Travel. 

It  is  the  reader  to  whom  this  travel  is  of  the  most  account.  How  many 
are  there  who  go  to  Scotland,  for  instance,  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  follow 
out  the  fancies  of  Walter  Scott's  immortal  music,  who  tramp  over  the  High- 
lands to  the  memory  of  Rob  Roy,  see  the  purple  Trossachs  for  the  sake  of 
Roderick  Dhu,  for  whom  Flodden  Field  would  be  barren  of  interest  had 
"Marmion"  never  been  written,  and  who  would  never  see  Dry  burgh  Abbey, 
or  the  ruins  of  Melrose,  or  Kenilworth  Castle,  but  for  the  phantoms  that  rise 
to  welcome  them  at  the  wand  of  the  wizard  of  the  North  ? 

How  many  are  there,  again,  who  would  never  cross  the  limits  of  the  Ital- 
ian town  that  knew  the  history  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  if  Shakespeare  had  told 
us  nothing  of  their  love;  whom  neither  the  heath  of  Fores,  nor  Birnam  Wood, 
nor  Dunsinane,  would  ever  tempt  from  the  beaten  path,  had  not  the  witches 
met  the  Thane  of  Cawdor  on  that  heath,  had  not  Macbeth  seen  those  woods 
moving  on  his  stronghold  ? 

Who  of  the  wandering  band  has  not  looked  for  Lord  Steyne's  mansion 
in  London  as  much  as  for  the  solid  stones  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington's — does 
not  glance  for  some  reminder  of  the  old  Colonel  and  Clive  Newcome  among 
the  Bluecoat  Boys  far  more  than  for  any  of  the  real  and  famous  among  the 
long  list  of  those  boys? 

And  for  whom  is  not  London  peopled  with  the  beings  created  by  the 
fancy  of  him  whom  Lady  Bulwer — before  his  death,  in  common  with  the  crew 
who  busy  themselves  in  hunting  out  only  his  follies  and  blemishes  since  his 
death — styled  the  Aristophanes  of  the  Pot-house  and  the  Plutarch  of  the  Pave, 
but  whom  the  world  will  know  long  after  his  defamers  are  forgotten,  as  the 
Lord  of  Laughter  and  Tears?  What  is  the  Court  of  Chancery  to  our  travelers 
but  as  it  gives  them  Mr.  Jarndyce  and  Miss  Flyte  ?  Of  whom  of  all  that  have 
entered  the  gates  of  the  Marshalsea  do  they  reckon  but  Little  Dorrit  ?  And 
do  they  not  know  the  very  house  that  will  presently  crack  from  top  to  bot- 
tom, the  man  whose  mustache  goes  up  and  whose  nose  goes  down  when  he 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


KENILWORTH  CASTLE. 

laughs,  sitting  in  the  window  meanwhile?  They  walk  through  High  Hoi- 
born  to  look  for  the  shop  of  Poll  Sweedlepipes  and  the  lodgings  of  Mrs. 
Gamp ;  they  follow  Mr.  Pickwick  from  the  city ;  Brighton  stands  to  them 
only  for  Paul  Dombey  and  "What  are  the  wild  waves  saying?"  the  dialect  of 
Yorkshire  has  no  other  significance  to  their  ears  than  that  John  Browdie  spoke 
it;  Dover  is  sacred  to  Betsy  Trotwood  and  the  donkeys;  Yarmouth  means  the 
wreck  of  Steerforth:  England  and  the  English  are,  in  fact,  only  Charles 
Dickens.  And  now  they  will  be  following  the  footsteps  of  Macleod  of  Dare, 
perhaps,  or  looking  up  the  localities  of  the  next  story-writer  who  stamps  his 
die  with  such  vigorous  action  as  to  impress  all  hearts  with  the  personality  of 
his  fancies  or  his  portraits. 

Do  we  not  picture  to  ourselves  and  realize  more  clearly  the  domestic  life 
of  Egypt,  better  than  the  tomes  of  history  can  teach  it,  on  reading  Theophile 


446  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Gautier's  "Romance  of  a  Mummy,"  and  have  afterwards  explored  an  Egyp- 
tian tomb  ourselves  ?  What  should  we  reck  of  the  barbaric  tribes  of  a  little 
peninsula  in  the  Levant  and  its  rocky  islets,  if  Homer  had  not  held  up  his 
torch  to  their  struggles  ?  Do  we  not  all  feel  that  Homer  created  Helen  ?  and 
should  we  care  a  straw  for  all  Schliemann's  work  if  Homer  had  never  sung  of 
Achilles  and  the  Xanthus?  But  Homer  having  sung  we  must  go  and  see 
what  Schliemann  has  dug  up. 


Travel  in  Our  Own   Land. 

Yet  great  as  I  believe  the  advantages  of  foreign  travel  are,  not  to  the  in- 
dividual mind  alone,  but  to  all  others  with  which  that  mind  is  afterward 
brought  in  contact,  I  cannot  but  think  that  a  little,  nay  a  good  deal,  of  home 
travel  has  its  advantages,  too. 

Certainly  in  point  of  grandeur  and  picturesque  beauty  our  own  country 
confessedly  carries  off  the  palm,  though  we  may  have  no  cities  so  appositely 
placed  as  Rome  in  the  circuit  of  her  hills,  or  Venice  on  her  isles;  and  if  it  has 
not  the  interest  that  tented  tribe  and  caravan  merchant  and  border  baron  have 
given  to  foreign  spots,  it  yet  has,  as  archaeologists  maintain,  an  unwritten 
and  wonderful  history  that  every  traveler  and  explorer  may  help  to  bring  to 
light. 

When  in  the  midst  of  an  afternoon  stroll  in  any  sufficiently  common- 
place region  one  mounts  a  hill  to  find  a  lake  on  its  top,  and  presently  sees  that 
the  lake  is  an  artificial  basin  fed  by  presumable  adits  from  higher  hills  and 
by  the  constant  rain-fall,  banked  up  for  some  unknown  purpose  so  long  ago 
that  trees  apparently  of  the  primeval  forest  have  grown  upon  its  edges,  then 
one  knows  that  there  is  a  history  written  there  which  he  who  runs  may  not 
read,  and  that  in  its  vast  hieroglyphic  is  held  the  story  of  some  old  race  whose 
very  traces  have  hardly  other  recognition.  Is  it  any  more  pleasure,  we  won- 
der, to  read  the  hieroglyphics  of  the  Rosetta  Stone  than,  if  it  were  possible, 
to  read  the  burden  hidden  here  ?  And  to  the  careful  eye  the  whole  land,  it  is 
said,  and  particularly  in  the  more  picturesque  portions,  is  written  all  over 
with  as  evident  a  script  of  its  secrets. 

To  people  who  go  abroad  for  the  sake  of  the  associations  that  foreign 
places  have  with  historic  names  and  identities,  and  for  the  sake  even  of  gen- 
eral enlightenment,  travel  means  much  more  than  simply  journeying  from 
place  to  place,  and  sight-seeing  by  the  way;  but  to  people  who  go  abroad 
merely  for  the  sake  of  scenery,  doubtless  they  might  find  as  good  at  home. 

We  question  if  the  falls  of  Schaffhausen,  whose  polished  chrysoprase  Rus- 
kin  loves,  exceed  the  beauty  of  the  falls  of  Montmorency,  of  Trenton,  or  Pas- 


THE  SWITZER  TRAIL,  SIERRA  MADRE  MOUNTAINS,   CALIFORNIA. 


448  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

sale,  or  countless  other  falls  in  which  we  rejoice  at  home ;  if  the  Lakes  of 
Kijlarney  are  more  wildly  beautiful  than  Lake  George,  than  Lake  Tupper  in 
thej  Adirondacks,  than  the  Upper  Mississippi  at  Trempealean  Island  or  at 
Lake  Pepin ;  if  the  Rhine  has  more  positive  loveliness  than  the  Hudson,  or 
many  legends  better  worth,  or  has  half  the  loveliness  of  the  blue  Juniata; 
if  any  single  scene  in  the  Alps  is  superior  to  the  scene  at  the  mouth  of  th^ 
Willamette  where  the  seven  snow  cones  of  Oregon  pierce  the  purple,  with  the 
black  woods  climbing  their  sides  till  the  clouds  drift  through  their  tops ;  if 
any  river  in  Europe  at  all  equals  either  the  Green,  the  Weber,  or  the  Colo- 
rado, with  their  mighty  canyons ;  if  anywhere  in  the  world  a  rival  is  to  be 
found  to  the  valley  of  the  Yosemite,  or  of  the  Yellowstone,  with  the  weird 
color  of  its  rocks   and  waters,  the  very  witch-work  of  beauty.     And  with 
Quebec,  a  remnant  of  the  old  French  civilization,  across  our  line  on  the  north, 
and  Mexico,  with  its  Spanish  cities,  its  cathedrals,  palaces,  and  plazas  only  a 
few  days'  sail  away  on  the  south,  who  shall  say  we  have  not  a  mimic  Europe 
on  our  own  borders?      It  has  always  been  a  marvel  that  people  should  desire 
to  go  abroad  and  inspect  other  countries  when  they  have  not  yet  seen  the  most 
famous  portions  of  their  own.     If  it  is  on  account  of  the  need  of  study,  if  it  is 
through  some  yearning  to  tread  in  the  footsteps  of  those  whose  fame  is  en- 
shrined in  our  love  and  reverence,  if  it  is  to  see  some  battle-field  where  the 
world  once  hung  in  the  balance,  to  follow  in  the  path  of  some  poet  and  learn 
for  ourselves  what  it  was  that  fed  his  genius,  to  explore  the  haunts  of  history, 
then,  of  course,  nothing  should  stand  in  the  way,  and  no  poverty  of  home 
travel  prevent  the  voyage ;  but  if  it  is  merely  for  the  sake  of  excitement,  to 
while  away  the  time,  to  say  one  has  been  abroad,  to  see  charming  sights,  then 
the  desire  is  not  so  comprehensible.     I  have  even  heard  other  people  declare 
that  they  would  experience  a  sensation  of  shame  to  stand  awe-struck  under 
neath  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's  if  they  had  never  seen  the  white  wonder  of  our 
own  Capitol  dome,  or  to  be  found  admiring  the  bucketful  of  water  tumbling 
over  Lodore  and  have  the  curious  stranger  inquire  concerning  the  Niagara 
which  they  had  failed  to  see  at  home.     The  rest  of  the  world,  indeed,  is  beau- 
tiful, but  those  wiseacres  who  hold  that  the  original  Eden  was  in  America  are 
not  so  far  out  of  truth's  way  as  they  might  be;  and  for  the  rest,  is  it  not 
written  that  "The  eyes  of  the  fool  are  in  the  ends  of  the  earth?" 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  44g 


CHAPTER    SEVENTEENTH. 


Love  of   Others. 

In  faith  and  hope  the  world  will  disagree, 
But  all  mankind's  concern  is  charity. 

— Pope. 

His  heart  and  hand  both  open  and  both  free, 
For  what  he  has  he  gives,  what  thinks  he  shows, 
Yet  gives  he  not  till  judgment  guides  his  bounty. 

— Shakespeare. 

Careless  their  merits  or  their  faults  to  scan. 
Thus  to  relieve  the  wretched  was  his  pride, 
And  even  his  failings  leaned  to  virtue's  side. 

— Goldsmith. 
Alas  for  the  rarity 
Of  Christian  charity 
Under  the  sun ! 

—  Thomas  Hood. 

Blessed  is  he  that  considereth  the  poor. 

— Psalms. 

The  destruction  of  the  poor  is  their  poverty. 

— Proverbs. 

He  that  hath  pity  upon  the  poor  lendeth  to  the  Lord. 

— Proverbs. 
Whene'er  I  take  my  walks  abroad 

How  many  poor  I  see ! 
What  shall  I  render  to  my  God 
For  all  His  gifts  to  me? 

— Dr.  Watts. 

I  owe  much ;  I  have  nothing;  I  give  the  rest  to  the  poor. 

— Rabelais. 

I'm  very  lonely  now,  Mary, 

For  the  poor  make  no  new  friends ; 
But  oh  they  love  the  better  still 

The  few  our  Father  sends ! 

—  Lady  Duffer  in. 

There  will  be  little  happiness  in  our  house  after  all,  if  it  has  been  built  and 
conducted  only  for  ourselves,  and  if  we  have  not  comprehended  that  the  rest 


450  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

of  the  world  has  a  share  in  it,  and  have  not  given  ourselves  the  happiness  of 
giving — giving  not  indiscriminatingly  but  wisely  and  joyously.  As  the  sea- 
son approaches  when  want  is  most  keenly  felt  by  the  poor,  and  begging 
children  appear  at  every  city  alleyway  and  country  door,  we  are  tempted  con- 
stantly to  pay  no  heed  to  the  rule  we  have  been  advised  to  form  of  giving 
no  alms  at  the  door,  but  of  referring  the  applicant  to  the  bureaus  of  associated 
charity,  or  to  one  society  or  another  that  stands  ready  to  afford  assistance 
where  needed.  But  from  this  denial  and  cold  reference  the  heart  shrinks, 
whether  or  not  reflection  and  reason  show  that  in  referring  those  asking  help 
to  these  societies  we  in  reality  give  them  far  more  efficient  help  than  it  is  possi- 
ble for  us  to  bestow  ourselves.  For  certainly,  in  our  large  cities,  charity  has 
•come  under  such  a  system,  and  philanthropy  is  so  well  organized  as  a  business, 
with  salaried  agents,  that  it  almost  brings  into  being,  as  a  counterpart,  the 
profession  of  pauperism.  

Associated   Charities. 

Let  a  person  once  prove  himself  in  need  and  incapable  of  exertion,  and 
bureaus  with  salaried  officers  make  that  person  an  object  of  solicitude ;  there 
are  hospitals  in  which  the  destitute  child  can  be  born,  asylums  where  it  can  be 
reared,  schools  where  it  can  be  educated,  reformatories,  if  need  be,  where  it 
can  be  trained,  institutions  from  which  later  on  it  can  be  fed,  and  public  fees 
at  last  with  which  it  can  be  buried.  In  fact,  being  recognized  and  acknowl- 
edged as  a  pauper,  it  can  be  comfortably  taken  care  of  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave. 

It  has,  of  course,  been  a  question  with  many  who  desire  the  advancement 
of  the  human  race  as  to  how  far  such  wide  charities  are  calculated  to  advance 
it,  and  whether,  indeed,  they  do  not  lower  its  average  of  usefulness,  virtue, 
and  intelligence.  So  long  as  the  tender  sympathy  with  suffering  which  exists 
in  the  heart  of  almost  all  who  are  themselves  free  from  want  and  suffering 
will  not  allow  the  beholder  to  see  this  trouble  without  trying  to  alleviate  it, 
the  imprudent,  the  improvident,  and  the  reckless  will  go  on  defiantly  multi- 
plying cares  and  wants,  sure  that  they  will  be  relieved  in  a  community  that 
can  not  be  disgraced  by  the  starvation  of  any  of  its  members,  and  could  not, 
from  pure  pity,  suffer  the  thought  of  the  starvation  anyway,  if  brought  to  its 
notice,  as  such  case  would  surely  be.  Yet  the  whole  direction  of  this  sort  of 
thing,  according  to  the  opinion  of  the  greater  number  of  those  who  have 
made  pauperism  and  charity  a  subject  of  scientific  study,  is  to  increase  the 
proportion  of  paupers,  and  so  to  deteriorate  the  moral  and  mental  condition, 
not  only  of  scattered  individuals,  but  of  the  race. 


STEPPING    STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  451 

It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  all  the  modern  ameliorations  of  life  make  life 
possible  to  those  who  in  past  generations  would  have  died  after  a  very  short 
trial  of  existence.  To-day  these  same  examples  live,  but,  for  all  that,  they 
have  not  the  strength  to  repel  diseases  that  are,  it  may  be  said,  the  result  of 
the  intrinsic  weakness  of  their  own  systems,  and  they  transmit  a  vitiated  or- 
ganism to  their  descendants  and  again  lower  the  average  of  health  and  vital- 
ity in  the  whole  mass. 


Transmission  of  Vitiated  Organisms. 

In  spite  of  the  terrible  condition  of  the  poor,  this  fact  reaches  over  and 
touches  them  at  many  points.  We  can  not,  moreover,  lower  the  average  of 
health  without  making  work  more  difficult  to  do,  and  livelihood  the  harder 
to  obtain ;  and  here  we  travel  in  a  vicious  circle,  for  the  moment  we  encoun- 
ter the  inability  to  obtain  a  livelihood  in  poverty  we  encounter  sickly  condi- 
tions again,  brains  undeveloped,  and  bodies  poorly  nourished,  in  crowded 
and  poisonous  neighborhoods.  It  is  known  of  every  one  who  pays  attention 
to  the  matter  that  extreme  poverty  is  not  favorable  to  the  production  of  vir- 
tue ;  on  the  contrary  that  it  is  the  hot-bed  of  vice,  and  cannot  help  being  so. 
It  is  equally  well  known  that  there  are  instances  of  extreme  wealth  of  the 
same  nature,  that  there  is  more  than  one  noble  family  in  Europe,  and  wealthy 
family  here,  notorious  for  some  one  vicious  trait,  and  that  where  the  case  is 
not  so  bad  as  this,  in  many  instances  the  families  die  out  and  become  extinct 
through  too  great  indulgence  in  luxury.  Yet  for  one  such  case  among  those 
in  affluent  circumstances  there  are  countless  ones  to  be  found  among  the  so- 
called  pauper  class.  Be  they  rich  or  poor,  the  intemperate  and  the  profligate, 
owing  to  their  infringement  of  the  laws  of  nature,  will  leave  few  of  their  race 
and  name  behind  them ;  and  those  few  are  more  likely  than  not  to  continue 
the  sins  and  crimes  of  those  who  went  before  them,  and  so  make  sin  heredi- 
tary. When  the  profligate  rich  continue  to  exist,  it  is  because  of  an  extraordi- 
nary original  strength  in  the  race,  making  a  vitality  hard  to  overcome ;  yet 
ordinarily  they  tend  to  extinction  through  other  causes,  as  even  in  marrying 
they  choose  heiresses,  the  fact  of  whose  wealth  shows  that  they  are  the  only 
daughters  of  their  parents,  and  whose  mothers  perhaps  were  only  daughters 
before  them,  if  anything  may  be  inferred  from  the  accumulation  of  money  in 
their  single  hands;  and  the  pair  start  "housekeeping"  with  a  hereditary  ten- 
dency to  keep  their  numbers  small,  while  the  tendencies  of  their  manner  of 
life  are  to  disease  and  early  death.  Of  course  it  will  be  claimed  that  they  are 
those  exceptions  which  prove  the  rule. 


452 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


Extremes  of  Wealth  and  Poverty. 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  two  extremes  either  of  great  wealth  or  of  extreme 
poverty  are  equally  dangerous  to  the  social  structure  and  equally  to  be 
avoided.  The  one  has  no  object  in  life  but  to  dissipate  time  upon  enjoyment, 
a  new  enjoyment  being  constantly  to  be  invented  to  replace  the  enjoyment 
that  palls.  The  other,  also,  has  no  object  in  life  but  enjoyment — enjoyment 
which  in  such  instance  can  only  be  attained  by  wrong-doing  of  one  kind  or 
another.  Honest  poverty  is  quite  another  thing — poverty  that  works  and  that 
refuses  alms,  but  meets  on  common  ground  with  moderate  wealth  and  com- 
fort, each  naturally  supplying  the  wants  of  the  other,  each  indispensable  to 
the  other,  each  holding  up  the  pillars  of  the  state,  each  liable  to  interchange 
conditions.  It  is  not  with  that  sort  of  wealth  or  poverty  that  the  perplexed 
student  of  social  science  deals,  and  perhaps  the  time  will  come  when  it  will 
enter  upon  the  consideration  of  undue  wealth  as  earnestly  as  upon  that  of 
undue  poverty,  and  look  about  for  methods  that  shall  prevent  the  excess  of 
either  one  or  the  other.  

Giving  at  the  Door. 

It  is  a  little  hard  on  the  good  housewife  that  she  can  not  hear  the  timid 
ring  at  her  own  gate,  and  see  the  wan,  pinched  face  and  shivering  figure  there, 
without  finding  herself  launched  on  the  great  social  problem  of  all  ages.  She 
will  hardly  be  likely  to  adjust  matters  with  any  delicate  balance  between  sys- 
tems of  philosophy  or  philanthropy ;  she  will  not  pause  to  think  whether  she 
is  fostering  crime  and  increasing  the  wrong  she  wishes  to  cure.  She  sees, 
at  any  rate,  that  here  is  a  child  into  whom  a  good  meal  will  put  needed  life, 
and  for  whom  a  full  basket  will  make  joy,  and  she  proceeds  at  once  to  incur 
the  displeasure  of  all  the  scientific  philanthropists  by  disobeying  their  advice 
and  feeding  the  child.  Perhaps  afterward  she  takes  notes  of  the  case,  and 
refers  it  to  the  especial  society  whose  duty  it  is  to  look  after  it,  and  not  feel- 
ing quite  sure  even  then  of  aid  and  justice,  takes  it  upon  herself  to  see  if  that 
society  has  done  its  duty  by  personal  inspection,  altogether  in  ignorance  that 
she  is  thus  interfering  with  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  problem,  and  is 
destroying  the  efficacy  of  organized  charity  by  interfering  with  the  organiza- 
tion. 

There  is  an  old  line  familiar  to  most  of  us,  "The  poor  ye  have  always 
with  you,"  the  force  of  which  we  seldom  realize  so  much  as  in  the  bitter  davs 
when  the  sun  runs  low  and  his  beams  are  so  niggardly.  But  I  think  that 
most  of  us  will  leave  the  question  of  equivalents  and  ultimate  perfection  to 
the  political  economists  and  gradgrinds  when  a  little  shivering  form  stands 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  453 

in  the  porch  some  freezing  day,  with  a  blue  and  pinched  face  and  trembling 
lips,  and  asks  for  a  bit  of  bread,  and  we  shall  give  her  the  bread  whether  we 
are  at  liberty  or  not!  How  else  would  we  sit  down  to  a  sumptuous  dinner 
after  having  refused  a  crust  to  the  little  wistful  beggar  ?  and  do  we  not  all  feel 
that  we  would  better  be  the  victims  of  possible  imposture  than  the  instruments 
of  certain  cruelty? 

Many  of  those  who  occupy  our  luxurious  homes  have  but  little  conception 
of  what  poverty  is.  The  French  princess  who,  when  she  heard  during  a 
famine  that  the  people  had  no  bread,  wondered  if  they  could  not  eat  cake, 
although  really  she  simply  meant  oaten  cake,  is  only  an  exaggerated  repre- 
sentative of  many  of  our  women  who  havs  never  entered  the  houses  of  the 
poor,  and  know  nothing  at  all  of  the  way  the  world  treats  them.  If  these 
ladies  who  have  only  "lived  in  the  roses  and  lain  in  the  lilies  of  life,"  whose 
hearts  are  full  of  kindness,  yet  who  are  ignorant  of  what  real  deprivation 
means,  should  leave  their  fortunate  fastnesses  and  go  down  into  the  purlieus 
of  poverty,  penetrate  reeking  cellars,  climb  rickety  stairs,  see  the  parched 
fever  patient  burning  out  his  delirium  alone ;  see  the  consumptive  on  his 
straw,  exposed  to  the  draughts  of  leaky  roof  and  broken  window,  without 
nourishment  or  dainty ;  see  the  hearty  children  hungry  still  on  the  daily  divi- 
sion of  a  single  loaf ;  see  hopeless  girls,  wrapped  in  shawls  and  without  fire, 
sewing  for  life,  as  if  they  saw  the  monsters  that  stalked  behind  them;  see 
mothers  aching  for  their  children,  and  fathers  empty-handed  and  cursing 
their  fate ;  see  all  the  horrid,  piercing  sights  of  want — of  want  whose  neigh- 
bor on  the  one  hand  is  death,  and  on  the  other  is  crime — then,  we  think, 
their  hearts  would  be  sore  among  their  treasures  unless  they  could  do  some- 
thing to  relieve  a  little  shaie  of  the  trouble  with  which  every  great  city  is 
catacombed.  There  are  many  of  our  wealthy  women,  let  it  be  repeated,  who, 
though  they  have  heard  of  poverty,  are  so  unacquainted  with  its  actual  re- 
semblance as  to  be  able  to  form  no  idea  of  the  real  state  of  things.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  there  are  just  as  many  more  who  make  it  their  business  to  be 
informed  of  all  this  dark  and  sad  under-life,  and  who  spend  a  good  part  of 
their  days  in  giving  and  devising,  and  assuaging  the  pain  there  still  must 
be  in  spite  of  them.  

Lovely  Examples. 

Indeed,  I  know  lovely  ladies  who,  in  simple  garb,  spend  some,  certain 
hours  of  every  day,  in  alleviating  all  the  suffering  that  they  can  reach,  and 
who  then,  going  home,  put  on  their  silken  garments  and  tread  their  velvet 
floors,  and  give  nc  intimation  of  the  sights  they  have  seen  to  sadden  the 
guests,  unless  the  assistance  of  those  guests  is  needed. 


454  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

To  all  other  women  of  wealth,  when  in  the  arms  of  their  own  comforts 
they  know  how  strongly  fire  and  furs  and  hearty  food  are  needed  by  them- 
selves, let  such  examples  be  commended,  not  only  since  they  will  find  their 
recompense  in  the  act,  but  in  remembrance  of  the  assurance  also  that  "Inas- 
much as  ye  did  it  unto  the  least  of  these,  ye  did  it  unto  Me!" 

But  for  our  part,  those  of  us  that  are  not  wealthy,  we  cannot  run  the  risk 
of  letting  even  possible  suffering  and  death  load  the  winter  with  their  dark 
weight  without  examining  into  the  facts  of  the  case,  or  else,  provided  the  power 
to  alleviate  is  ours,  we  shall  feel  that  the  blood  of  these  sufferers  is  on  our 
hands.  There  is  always,  we  know,  some  one  member  of  our  family  who  is 
able  to  look  into  these  matters;  and  once  having  the  report,  we  are  at  ease; 
if  the  case  of  suffering  is  a  forged  one,  our  sympathies  are  relieved;  if  it  is 
genuine,  and  if  to  lighten  its  load  we  are  obliged  to  forego  the  new  cloak,  to 
delay  the  new  silk,  or  abandon  the  opera  tickets,  we  can  be  soothed  by  the 
consciousness  that  our  heavenly  robe  will  be  all  the  brighter,  and  our  souls 
will  be  all  the  more  finely  attuned  by-and-by  to  the  music  of  the  stars  singing 
together.  Cold  comfort,  perhaps,  but  sure;  for  he  that  giveth  to  the  poor 
lendeth  to  the  Lord. 

Still,  it  is  iisually  possible  to  assuage  the  pain  of  poverty  without  depriv- 
ing ourselves  of  enjoyment  of  real  consequence,  for  the  poor,  it  is  said,  are 
able  to  be  happy  on  the  superfluity  of  the  rich,  and  the  mistress  of  a  single 
comfortable  household  has  kept  the  wolf  from  the  door  of  more  than  one  pen- 
niless family  during  a  whole  winter. 

It  needs,  perhaps,  a  little  more  oversight  of  store-room  and  cupboard  than 
it  is  always  agreeable  to  give,  in  order  to  make  sure  that  this  superfluity 
shall  go  in  the  right  direction ;  a  little  more  attention  to  the  way  of  the  cook 
with  her  friends  who  are  not  in  such  dire  distress,  thus  to  see  for  ourselves 
that  the  fragments  of  our  feasts  reach  those  in  real  need.  Yet  that  is  but  a 
slight  tax ;  and  we  shall  be  well  rewarded  in  the  rosy  cheeks  of  the  children 
who  come  daily  with  their  baskets,  when  we  reflect  that  but  for  our  oversight, 
the  cheeks  would  have  been  wan  and  pinched  and  blanched,  even  if  their 
owners  were  not  underground  altogether. 


A  Degrading  Course. 

It  may  be  that  it  would  be  more  agreeable  if  we  could  sit  down  at  our 
novel  and  our  fancy-work,  our  little  bit  of  piano  practice  or  water-color,  our 
entertainment  of  callers,  our  afternoon  stroll,  our  evening  gayety,  enjoy  life 
in  sybaritic  fashion,  and  know  nothing  of  the  presence  of  distress  in  the 
world.  But  if  we  reflected  upon  the  results  even  to  ourselves  of  such  a  course 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


455 


MORE  AGREEABLE  IF  WE  COULD  SIT  DOWN  AT  OUR  FANCY  WORK. 

of  life,  we  should  see  at  once  how  injurious  and  degrading  it  would  be;  the 
flies,  the  butterflies  live  as  valuable  a  one;  the  flowers  that,  at  any  rate,  scat- 
ter their  sweet  perfume  abroad,  like  the  aroma  of  good  deeds,  and  in  so  far 
add  to  the  enjoyment  and  happiness,  live,  we  might  almost  say,  a  better  one. 
Never  to  have  our  sympathies  called  out,  our  active  interest  in  the  needs  of 
others,  our  active  assistance ;  never  to  be  able  to  experience  pity,  that  divine 
emotion  which  is  but  the  pathetic  side  of  love,  which  so  enlarges  and  ennobles 
every  soul  that  knows  it;  never  to  join  in  the  sorrows  of  others — why,  it  is 


456  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

like  living  in  a  glare  of  everlasting  sunshine,  and  never  knowing  the  depth 
and  glory  cf  the  darkness  that  sets  the  soul  and  the  imagination  free  among 
the  stars. 

The  Poor  a  Benison. 

In  fact  for  those  of  us  who  have  a  right  to  be  classed  on  the  other  side,  it 
is  a  good  thing  that  there  are  the  poor  to  be  looked  after;  for  the  poor  are, 
indeed,  a  benison  bestowed  upon  us,  though  sometimes  in  disguise;  and 
the  community  in  which  there  are  no  poor  is  by  no  means  one  to  be  envied. 
"God's  poor,"  an  old  writer  has  it;  and  to  make  them  ours  also  is  but  another 
bond  to  the  Divine  love.  That  is  necessarily  but  a  selfish  and  one-sided  life 
which  has  no  outlet  toward  the  majority  of  mankind,  toward  that  dark  and 
dreary  lot  which  belongs  to  the  larger  number  of  our  fellow-creatures;  for 
great  wealth  is  but  a  phenomenal  thing,  great  comfort  belongs  to  the  very 
few,  and  though  a  modicum  of  comfort  belongs  to  many,  yet  the  by-places  of 
the  world  are  full  of  those  who  want  and  wait  and  weary  in  their  suffering. 

The  brilliant  flies,  with  wings  of  many  colors,  that  we  see  disporting  in 
the  air  are  to  be  numbered,  but  the  slugs  and  worms  and  blind  beetles  that 
live  in  the  dark,  and  that  we  see  in  multitudes  under  any  stone  that  is  turned 
up  in  a  pasture,  are  countless. 


What  the  Poor  Have  Done. 

But  apart  from  the  moral  value  of  the  poor  to  those  in  better  circum- 
stances, what  in  the  world  would  be  done  without  them  ?  Who  but  the  poor 
have  built  our  railroads  and  tunneled  our  mountains  and  laid  the  piers  of  our 
bridges  beneath  the  rivers  ?  who  but  the  poor  have  mined  our  coal,  smelted 
our  ores,  sailed  our  ships,  built  our  houses,  tended  our  gardens,  groomed  our 
horses,  made  our  garments?  who  but  the  poor  have  done  our  household  work, 
and  have,  in  fact,  by  their  laborious  existence  made  our  easy  and  luxurious 
one  possible?  If  we  lived  in  the  wilderness,  and  there  were  no  poor  about 
us,  all  the  millions  of  Croesus  would  not  prevent  the  necessity  of  our  labor- 
ing in  order  merely  to  keep  the  breath  between  our  teeth ;  it  is  only  by  their 
neighborhood  that  we  enjoy  our  ease  where  we  are.  In  the  city  we  scarcely 
appreciate  this  peculiar  blessing  of  the  poor,  as  the  machinery  of  city  life 
works  in  such  wise  that  we  hardly  feel  our  wants  before  they  are  answered ; 
but  in  the  country  what  would  become  cf  us  without  a  neighbor  in  less  lucky 
circumstances  than  our  own,  who  would  run  our  errands,  do  our  chores,  lend 
a  hand  at  the  housework  in  time  of  need,  wait  on  table  at  a  pinch,  take  home 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


457 


THE  MOST  WE  CAN  DO  FOR  THE  POOR  IS  BUT  A  DEBT  WE  OWE. 

the  extra  washing-  of  a  guest,  dig  the  paths  in  winter,  clear  up  the  grounds  in 
spring  and  fall,  do  all  and  every  odd  job,  man  and  wife  and  child,  at  home 
and  abroad?  The  money  we  pay  that  family  is  a  pittance  whose  outgoing 
from  time  to  time  we  do  not  feel,  but  whose  incoming  is  to  them  a  bounty 
and  a  theme  for  thanksgiving,  while  the  service  they  do  for  us  we  can  never 
quite  appreciate  till  by  some  accident  we  are  deprived  of  it.  And  since  the 
poor  are,  as  it  would  seem,  of  such  value  to  us,  would  it  not  be  a  shame  if  the 
good  done  were  all  on  one  side,  and  were  of  no  value  to  them  ?  Indeed  it 


458  STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS. 

may  well  be  said — not  only  in  view  of  the  equities  of  the  case  through  the 
bounty  we  have  received  from  Heaven,  but  in  view  of  the  services  the  poor 
as  a  body  render — that  the  most  we  can  do  for  the  poor  is  not  a  favor  that 
we  show  them,  but  a  debt  we  owe. 

After  all,  where  there  is  a  will  there  is  a  way ;  and  whether  by  associated 
or  by  personal  endeavor,  the  poor  are  to  be  relieved,  and  relieved  by  us.  We 
can  not  all  do  as  Anstress  Hermans  did  with  her  money,  but  we  can  all  appre- 
ciate what  she  did  and  emulate  her  example,  with  large  means  if  we  have 
them,  in  lesser  ways  if  those  are  all  that  are  possible  to  us. 


The  Story  of  Anstress. 

There  had  been  large  expectations  in  the  city  concerning  the  day  when 
Anstress  Hermans  should  come  of  age — expectations  in  which,  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say,  almost  every  one  within  the  circle  of  her  radiation,  so  to  speak,  partici- 
pated in  a  greater  or  less  degree.  Well-bred,  well-educated,  well-looking,  of 
good  disposition,  the  fact  of  her  approaching  majority  caused  the  parents  of 
eligible  sons  to  count  upon  the  advantages  of  her  entrance  into  their  respec- 
tive families,  caused  the  youths  themselves — without,  therefore,  being  cox- 
combs— to  think  of  the  possibility  of  grasping  at  once  what  few  of  them  would 
ever  grasp  in  all  the  course  of  their  lives,  and  caused  youths  and  maidens  alike 
to  rejoice  in  the  prospect  of  the  festivities  with  which,  according  to  im- 
memorial usage  in  such  circumstances,  the  twenty-first  birthday  of  the  young 
heiress  would  most  probably  be  celebrated. 

Whether  the  festivities  were  to  take  place  or  not,  the  parents  and  the  sons 
just  mentioned  might  have  spared  themselves  the  trouble  of  hope  or  of  con- 
jecture ;  for  the  affections  of  Anstress  had  already  been  engaged  by  the  son 
of  her  guardian,  a  companion  of  hers  since  childhood,  and  who  if  not,  as  yet, 
entirely  arousing  her  deeper  nature,  had  succeeded  in  making  himself  as  alto- 
gether indispensable  to  her  daily  life  as  he  found  her  to  be  to  his,  and  the 
only  reason  why  the  engagement  between  them  had  not  been  announced  was 
because  Mr.  Jeffreys,  the  father  of  the  young  gentleman,  and  the  guardian  of 
Anstress,  had,  in  order,  perhaps,  to  save  appearances  by-and-by,  expressed 
a  wish  that  nothing  of  the  sort  should  be  considered  definite  and  irrevocable 
until  after  Anstress  had  become  of  age,  in  which  case,  of  course,  it  was  wisest 
that  nothing  at  all  should  be  said  of  it  abroad — Mr.  Jeffreys  taking  excellent 
care,  in  the  mean  time,  to  hedge  her  about  in  good  measure  from  any  too  great 
intimacy  with  other  suitors,  and  to  have  nearly  all  the  small  things  which 
make  the  happiness  of  life  reach  her  only  through  this  son  of  his,  the  tall  and 
quiet,  grave  John  Jeffreys. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  459 

Of  course  John  could  have  nothing  to  do  with  bestowing  upon  her  any  of 
the  material  comforts  which  she  enjoyed ;  those  were  the  gift  of  her  dead 
father,  dead  almost  since  her  infancy;  but  it  had  been  the  policy  of  Mr. 
Jeffreys  to  afford  those  to  her  so  stintingly,  that  when,  through  John's 
urgency,  any  greater  largess  and  liberty  were  allowed  to  Anstress,  it  should 
seem  like  the  gift  of  John  himself.  Of  this,  to  be  sure,  John  was  totally  un- 
observant and  unaware,  or  it  might  have  fared  differently  with  Anstress,  for 
the  young  student  had  some  pride  of  character  that  would  have  proved  a 
formidable  obstacle  to  such  course  of  treatment.  But,  as  it  was,  Mr.  Jeffreys 
could  not  think  of  letting  Anstress  undergo  the  expense  of  a  coach  and  horses; 
but  John  represented  her  desire  for  an  equipage  so  strongly,  that,  when  it 
was  at  last  allowed,  it  was  quite  as  if  John  took  her  to  drive  with  his  own 
team,  supposing  that  he  had  one;  and  when  Mr.  Jeffreys  declared  that  his 
performance  of  his  duty  would  be  questionable  if  he  suffered  Anstress  to  pur- 
chase a  set  of  sapphires  on  which  her  heart  was  fixed,  it  was  John  who  had 
them  sent  to  the  house,  and  then  displayed  Anstress,  decked  in  their  sparkle, 
to  his  father,  with  such  eloquence,  that  the  guardian  could  not  but  relent, 
with  much  show  of  being  overcome  by  the  eloquence,  but  not  at  all  by  the 
sparkle,  and  it  was  quite  as  if  John  had  given  her  the  sapphires;  and  it  was 
John  who  really  took  her  to  the  theatre  (this  was  before  the  day  of  chaperones), 
to  the  picture  galleries,  secured  the  best  seat  for  her  when  any  gay  pageant 
was  in  procession,  brought  her  the  news,  and  rendered  her  all  those  pleasant 
unobtrusive  flatteries  which  make  a  young  girl  think  what  a  sweet  thing  life 
is.  It  was  John,  too,  who  gave  Anstress  something  to  busy  herself  about  and 
to  feel  an  occupying  solicitude  for.  It  was  to  make  his  pipe  doubly  pleasant 
to  him  that  she  spent  months  in  embroidering  a  smoking-cap,  with  so  much 
gold  braid  that  it  was  top  heavy ;  it  was  to  prevent  his  taking  cold  that  the 
silk  dressing-gown  was  quilted  in  such  stir  and  secrecy ;  it  was  for  a  pattern 
for  John's  satchel  that  she  ransacked  all  the  haberdasheries;  it  was  to  orna- 
ment his  paper-cutter  and  book-marks  that  she  learned  to  paint ;  it  was  with 
regard  to  his  comfort  or  his  welfare  that  she  pursued  almost  every  step  of  her 
quiet  and  guarded  life— and  very  likely,  in  the  first  place  and  principally,  be- 
cause it  was  her  nature  to  desire  to  be  giving  pleasure  to  somebody,  and  so 
far  she  had  found  nobody  but  John,  and  now  it  was  a  habit.  .  She  had  lived 
in  the  same  house  with  him  as  a  child ;  after  he  went  to  the  university,  and 
while  she  attended  to  her  studies  with  a  governess,  his  casual  return  was 
something  to  look  forward  for,  since  it  always  was  a  holiday  by  Mr.  Jeffreys' 
direction  ;  the  whole  of  his  vacation  was  her  vacation,  too;  and  she  was  beam- 
ing and  smiling  with  pride  and  enthusiasm,  at  last,  on  the  day  when  he 
graduated  with  the  highest  honors,  and  every  one  admired  and  praised,  and 


460  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

he  brought  it  all  to  her.  John  was  a  sufficiently  fine-looking  and  manly  fel- 
low, of  a  temperate  disposition  and  habit  of  thought,  and  of  quite  the  average 
power  of  mind,  so  that  there  would  seem  to  be  no  reason  for  condemning  Mr. 
Jeffreys'  course  in  having  arranged  the  matter  as  he  had  between  his  son  and 
his  ward,  and  which  would  most  probably  have  arranged  itself  to  the  same 
end  had  he  let  it  alone.  Anstress  was  perfectly  happy  in  the  relation — John 
was  the  top  and  flower  of  chivalry  to  her  appreciation ;  it  was  a  great  thing 
to  be  his  handmaiden,  to  work  his  cravats  and  slippers,  to  learn  his  songs,  to 
dance  with  him  every  other  time  at  the  parties  that  Mr.  Jeffreys  allowed  her 
to  attend  on  the  promise  of  denying  herself  all  the  round-dances — a  promise 
that  he  had  no  need  to  extort,  since  Anstress  had  a  holy  horror  of  round- 
dances,  and,  besides  that,  they  made  her  dizzy.  It  was  on  driving  home  from 
one  of  these  parties  that  Anstress,  a  happy  little  maiden,  walled  about  by  the 
security  of  wealth,  and  ignorant  of  any  of  the  trouble  in  the  world,  was  first 
awakened  from  her  dream  ot  youth,  and  into  real  life.  Till  that  night  suffer- 
ing had  never  crossed  her  path,  no  one  had  demanded  the  exertion  of  her,  and 
she  had  not  troubled  herself  to  think  that  everv  one  in  the  world  was  not  as 
comfortable  and  content  as  she  was.  ^, 

John  had  been  away  from  town,  and  as  he  was  to  return  in  the  midnight- 
train,  she  had  left  the  little  company — where,  considering  John's  absence,  she 
had  been  enjoying  herself  quite  passably — something  earlier  than  usual,  and 
bade  the  coachman  hurry  home  by  the  quickest  route.  The  quickest  route 
was  by  no  means  the  pleasantest;  indeed,  it  lay  through  the  short-cut  of  a 
dozen  squalid  lanes,  and  Anstress,  leaning  back,  with  closed  eyes,  among 
her  luxurious  cushions,  was  startled  by  a  yell  and  an  oath,  the  shriek  of  a 
child,  and  then  a  loud  tumult  of  cries.  It  was  a  drunken  man,  she  afterward 
discovered,  beating  his  child,  and  interfered  with  by  the  neighbors,  till,  in  the 
general  rough-and-tumble  ensuing,  the  police  brought  peace  about  by  carry- 
ing all  the  participants  off  to  the  station-house  together.  Anstress  had  made 
the  coachman  wait,  in  spite  of  his  assurance  that  it  was  no  place  for  the  likes 
of  her;  her  heart  was  beating  with  terror  in  one  great  pulse  all  over  her;  the 
vague  things  she  had  heard  from  Sunday  to  Sunday  as  to  the  presence  of  sin 
and  horror  in  the  world,  without  ever  realizing  them,  became,  all  in  a  mo- 
ment, living  truths,  and  if  suddenly  a  yawning  chasm  of  the  bottomless  pit, 
across  which  flitted  shapes  of  fire,  had  opened  before  her,  she  would  have  felt 
no  otherwise  than  she  felt  that  moment  when  these  creatures  rose  and  aston- 
ished her,  by  the  glimmer  of  the  street  lights  and  the  carriage-lamps — 
children  that  were  incarnate  disease,  women  that  were  only  nightmares  of 
women,  men  like  wild  beasts — all  swarming  to  the  scene  of  riot,  and  around 
the  white-faced  lady  in  the  coach. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  461 

"What  does  it  mean?"  asked  Anstress,  after  the  police  has  led  away  the 
originator  of  the  disturbance. 

"Mane?"  cried  the  nearest  woman.  "That  it's  a  free  country  where  Pat 
O'Harrigan  hasn't  the  right  to  bate  his  own  b'y!" 

"But  he  didn't  know — he'd  been  drinking,  they  said" 

"Av  coorse  he  had!  And  yese  had  been  drinking  yerself,  an' the  ould 
woman  sint  to  the  Island  the  same  day,  more  betoken." 

"To  the  Island?"  asked  Anstress,  with  a  puzzled  tone. 

"Oh,  yese  a  mighty  foine  lady,"  said  the  woman,  turning  off  with  a 
laugh.  "But  ye'll  learn  where  the  Island  is  sune  enough,  I'll  warrant  ye,  if 
yese  go  round  by  day  as  naked  as  yese  are  by  night!" 

It  is  due  to  the  coachman  to  say  that  at  this  point  he  had  to  conquer  the 
inherited  instincts  of  a  long  line  of  McMurphys  in  order  to  prevent  himself 
from  precipitating  as  fine  a  shindy  as  ever  occurred  out  of  Donnybrook  Fair, 
but  he  struggled  manfully,  and  like  St.  Anthony,  overcame  the  temptation  by 
fleeing  away  from  it. 

"What  was  that  place  where  we  stopped,  James? — what  street,  I  mean?" 
asked  Anstress,  when  the  coach  drew  up  at  Mr.  Jeffreys'  door,  while  she 
gathered  closely  now  the  cloak  that  had  fallen  from  her  forgetful  shoulders 
when  leaning  from  the  carriage-window  during  the  disturbance. 

"'Dade,  miss,  and  you  mustn't  be  afther  asking  me,"  said  James,  '"for 
'twould  be  all  my  place  is  worth  if  the  master  found  I  been  driving  you  acrost 
a  bit  uv  the  North  End." 

And  not  wanting  to  annoy  him  just  then,  Anstress  went  up  the  steps  not 
very  much  enlightened  after  all.  John  had  come,  for  there  was  his  hat  in  the 
hall.  She  ran  into  the  drawing-room,  and,  in  passing,  paused  a  moment  be- 
fore the  long  mirror,  and  with  a  glance  the  woman's  last  words  came  over 
her  with  redoubled  force,  and  she  looked  at  herself  as  she  had  never  looked 
before — the  white  silk  clinging  to  the  form,  with  its  atom  of  a  waist,  out  of 
which  the  shoulders  rose  like  those  of  a  dryad  from  a  flower,  the  gore  and 
train  drawing  away  the  skirt  from  the  shapely  hip. 

"Oh,  I  don't  wonder  the  woman  said  so!"  cried  Anstress.  "It  is  just 
like  a  piece  of  statuary!  Why  didn't  somebody  tell  me?  And  all  the  others 
were  the  same." 

And  she  darted  away  to  her  own  room,  with  no  thought  of  John  or  of 
anything  else  but  sheltering  darkness. 

The  next  morning  Anstress  was  down  long  before  breakfast,  clad  in  her 
simplest  guise,  and  had  summoned  James,  and  bade  him  put  one  of  the  horses 
into  the  trap  and  drive  to  the  place  where  he  had  taken  her  on  the  night  be- 
fore. James  trembled  for  his  situation,  and  assured  her  that  indeed  it  wasn't 


462  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

safe;  but  as  Mr.  Jeffreys  had  not  yet  come  down,  the  man  had  nothing  to  do 
but  obey,  which  he  did  with  better  grace  after  Anstress  had  promised  him 
perfect  indemnity  from  Mr.  Jeffreys'  displeasure,  no  matter  what  happened; 
and  driving  to  Messuage  street,  a  little  money  easily  melted  the  way  before 
her,  and  Anstress  had  an  initiation  into  a  dark  side  of  the  world  that  her 
dreams  had  never  visited.  For  when  she  entered  a  room  in  one  of  the  houses 
of  that  dreadful  district — a  room  several  feet  below  the  street,  whose  walls 
were  stained  with  a  perpetual  ooze,  under  which  the  paper-hangings  had 
rotted  long  ago,  and  the  plaster  had  fallen  in  great  patches ;  where,  across  the 
floor,  the  leakage  of  a  water-pipe  sent  a  perpetual  gutter  that  gathered  in  a 
pool  at  the  other  end,  above  which  a  broken  window  was  half  blocked  up 
with  a  heap  of  garbage;  and  in  the  damp  and  the  dreary  half-light  a  wizened- 
looking  child  of  some  dozen  years  was  holding  a  gasping  baby  that  had  but  a 
few  moments  to  live — when  Anstress,  who  knew  nothing  of  poverty,  who  had 
hardly  seen  sickness,  and  never  seen  death,  entered  this  cellar,  it  was  only 
because  she  was  determined  not  to  do  so  that  she  did  not  faint  away,  for  she 
grew  sick  and  giddy  at  the  sight  and  thought  of  it.  The  little  girl  seemed  to 
be  too  absorbed  or  too  unhappy  to  think  the  intrusion  anything  strange,  for 
when  Anstress,  looking  at  the  pinched  and  frosted  face  of  the  baby,  asked 
hurriedly  where  the  doctor  was,  the  child  sobbed  out  that  her  mother  had 
gone  for  him,  but  he  wouldn't  come,  or  they'd  have  been  here.  Before  she 
had  finished  speaking,  Anstress  was  in  the  trap  and  away  after  the  family 
physician  of  the  Jeffreys;  but  when  she  triumphantly  returned  with  him  to 
the  place,  he  was  no  longer  needed — the  baby  had  left  it. 

"I  don't  know  what  I  wanted  it  to  live  for  in  such  a  place  as  this!"  cried 
Anstress,  never  thinking  of  recoiling  from  the  woman  on  whose  shoulder 
her  hand  lay,  and  looking  at  the  pitiful  object  in  her  arms  with  streaming 
eyes. 

The  woman  turned  away  and  neld  her  dead  baby  in  silence — .she  wanted 
at  least  the  luxury  of  her  grief  alone.  Anstress  stayed  a  moment  to  try  and 
soothe  the  little  girl,  who  was  crying  wildly,  and  then  laid  the  contents  of  her 
purse  in  her  hands,  and  went  out  after  the  physician.  As  they  closed  the 
door  of  the  cellar,  the  doctor  began  to  reprove  Anstress  for  being  there. 

"Do  not  talk  to  me,"  said  she.  "What  have  they  been  hiding  such 
things  from  me  for?  Now  that  I  am  here,  I  am  going  to  see  all  there  is  to 
see.  I  don't  suppose  they  can  be  quite  as  bad  off  in  the  upper  rooms.  What 
is  the  place  left  in  this  fashion  for — the  pipes  leaking,  the  drains  open?  The 
landlord  ought  to  be  whipped  through  the  streets!"  cried  Anstress,  in  a  pas- 
sion. "Oh,  to  think  of  their  living  so,  with  puddles  of  water  on  the  floor, 
and  the  children  dying  in  convulsions!" 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  463 

"It  was  no  convulsions  the  child  died  of,"  said  another  woman,  hurrying 
in  and  shoving  by  them  in  the  narrow  way.  "'Twas  starvation." 

"Do  you  mean  so?"  cried  Anstress,  catching  hold  of  her  and  letting  go 
again. 

"Indeed  I  do,"  replied  the  woman,  hurrying  on;  "and  'tis  no  place  for 
such  as  you,  miss,"  she  added,  looking  back,  more  kindly,  "for  the  house  is 
full  of  fever." 

"I  am  not  afraid  of  the  fever,"  said  Anstress.  "And  I  am  going  up- 
stairs. It  can't  be  that  I  shall  find  death  in  every  room."  But  afterward, 
Anstress  said  to  herself  that  Death  would  have  been  a  kinder  visitant  in  those 
rooms  than  the  squalor  and  the  suffering,  the  sin  and  sorrow,  that  she  found 
there.  When  she  came  out  with  the  doctor  into  the  free  air  again,  the 
children  on  the  sidewalk  were  saying  that  the  little  boy  who  was  beaten  last 
night  had  died  this  morning,  and  it  seemed  to  her  that  the  very  sky  had 
blackened  since  she  went  into  that  house. 

When  Anstress  returned  home,  breakfast  had  been  waiting  nearly  an 
hour;  but  that  was  of  small  consequence,  for  the  reproofs  her  unexplained 
truancy  received  were  only  affectionate  ones,  since  to-day  was  her  birthday 
and  the  day  of  her  majority.  Anstress  took  all  their  congratulations  very 
quietly,  sitting  by  John's  side,  and  silently  revolving  many  things  in  her 
troubled  mind. 

"I  am  going  to  be  told  about  my  property  to-day,  am  I  not,  John?"  she 
asked,  when  they  were  alone. 

"I  suppose  so,"  said  John.  "My  father  has  been  busy  in  the  library 
with  your  papers,"  he  said. 

"Do  you  know  how  much  it  is,  John?" 

"Not  exactly;  but  a  large  sum — seven  figures,  perhaps." 

"What!  millions?" 

"I  fancy  so.  Father  said  once  that  it  was  enough  for  the  income  alone 
to  be  a  fortune." 

"The  income — that  is,  the  interest?  That  is  what  other  people  pay  for 
the  use  of  it?" 

"About  that." 

"Yes,"  said  Anstress,  reflectively;  "I  remember,  in  the  arithmetic,  the 
horrible  things  in  percentage  my  governess  used  to  drive  me  wild  with.  Six 
per  cent. — and  does  one  always  receive  six  per  cent,  for  everything?" 

"Oh,  no;  sometimes  less,  sometimes  more.  Sometimes  the  money  is  not 
lying  at  idle  interest  as  in  loans,  but  is  earning  profits  as  in  railroads  and 
shipping.  Savings-banks  pay  you  a  small  per  cent.,  because  they  are  safe; 
buildings  pay  twice  as  much,  on  account  of  wear  and  tear." 


4<*4  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

"Why,  I  should  think  the  interest  paid  to  half  the  fortunes  in  the  world 
would  eat  up  all  the  other  half  some  day!" 

"So  it  would,  according  to  figures.  But,  practically,  there  are  found  to 
be  great  offsets  and  drawbacks." 

"Tell  me  about  it,  John.     I  ought  to  know — oughtn't  I?" 

"Certainly.  But  it  is  an  intricate  matter;  you  couldn't  understand  it, 
dear,  all  at  once.  I  don't  think  I  do  myself.  There  is  only  one  thing 
clear — that  the  rates  of  interest  are  exorbitant  and  that  while  philosophers 
quarrel  as  to  what  'brought  death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe,'  it  is  cer- 
tain that  that,  and  nothing  else,  makes  half  the  poverty  and  sin  there  is." 

"There  is  something  awful,  then,  in  being  very  rich!"  said  Anstress, 
opening  her  eyes. 

"Riches  are  certainly  a  great  responsibility,"  answered  John,  gravely. 

"Doesn't  it  make  you  afraid  tc  marry  me,  John?" 

"Few  people,"  said  John,  laughing,  "are  afraid  to  marry  an  heiress. 
But  your  property  is  settled  on  yourself,  and  is  to  be  always  independent  of 
all  the  husbands  in  creation." 

"But  you  will  have  to  take  care  of  it  for  me,  for  you  see  I  am  completely 
ignorant,  and  don't  know  anything  about  any  money  except  what  I  happen 
to  have  in  my  purse. ' ' 

"Very  well;  and  you  will  have  to  pay  me  a  salary  for  doing  so.  I  tell 
you  beforehand,  that  my  charges  will  be  high." 

Something  made  Anstress  turn  away  quickly.  Was  it  possible  that  John 
was  mercenary? — that,  after  all,  it  was  her  money  he  meant  to  marry,  or  that 
salary  belonging  to  the  guardian  of  a  fortune,  rather  than  herself?  Before 
the  shadow  had  more  than  time  to  flit  across  her  face,  and  bring  with  it  and 
leave  behind  it  a  crowd  of  new  thoughts,  to  add  to  all  the  others  of  the  night 
and  day,  the  bell  rang,  and  a  servant  summoned  her  and  John  to  Mr. 
Jeffreys,  in  the  library. 

j  "My  dear  Anstress,"  said  Mr.  Jeffreys,  with  great  solemnity,  when  they 
were  seated  around  the  library-table,  which  was  half  covered  with  files  of 
papers  tied  up  and  labeled,  "to-day  you  become  the  unfettered  mistress  of 
one  of  the  largest  fortunes  in  the  city.  You  have  been  an  orphan  for  twenty 
years,  and  the  property  your  father  left  you  has  been  steadily  increasing 
during  that  period.  I  think  you  will  be  satisfied  with  its  management. 
Here  are  schedules  of  the  items  and  receipts.  I  expect  you  to  examine  them 
all  scrupulously,  but  at  your  leisure.  You  will  see  that  the  large  amount 
withdrawn  from  mortgages,  and  invested  in  woolen  manufactures,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  war,  has  doubled  and  trebled  itself,  while  the  bonds,  which 
were  bought  at  forty  cents  on  the  dollar,  have  also  as  good  as  cleared  them- 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  465 

selves  thrice  over.  With  the  other  securities  you  will  do  as  you  please,  but 
the  bonds  I  shall  still  advise  you  to  retain,  in  spite  of  any  political  clamor 
that  may  reach  your  ear,  since,  the  coupons  being  negotiable,  a  million  of  the 
bonds  may  be  shut  up  in  one's  safe,  and  so  be  practically  exempt  from  all 
taxation,  no  one  being  the  wiser,  and  they  paying  not  a  dollar's  tax." 

"But,  Mr.  Jeffreys" began  Anstress,  and  paused.  Why  did  not  John 

speak  for  her,  she  was  asking  herself.  "I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,  but — is  that 
right?  Of  course,  I  don't  know — but  is  it  honest?" 

Certainly  Mr.  Jeffreys  had  the  right  to  be  displeased,  but  instead  of  that, 
he  laughed. 

"Now,  my  dear  Anstress,"  said  he,  "I  must  beg  you,  once  and  for  all,  to 
put  away  any  quixotic  notions  you  may  entertain.  Though,  with  your  large 
fortune,  you  may  deal  heavy  blows,  yet,  after  all,  you  will  find  yourself  fight- 
ing against  a  windmill,  and  get  some  backward  buffet  that  will  lay  you  flat. 
This  is  a  matter  of  business.  It  is  something  very  largely  done" 

"But  is  it  not  against  the  law?" 

"Why — strict  construction — certainly "- 

"And  in  accepting  the  protection  and  benefits  of  the  law,  we  tacitly 
promise  to  obey  it,  do  we  not?' 

"My  child,  nobody  has  time  for  such  finely-drawn  subtleties  and  Socratic 
questionings  in  a  matter  of  business.  I  am  very  much  afraid,"  said  Mr. 
Jeffreys,  with  hesitation,  "that  you  are  not  fit  for  the  management  of  affairs 
of  this  magnitude." 

"But  I  suppose,  dear  sir,"  said  Anstress,  gently,  "that  it  will  not 
ruin  me,  that  it  will  do  me  no  great  harm  if  I  pay  the  legal  tax  on  my 
bonds?" 

"No;  but  it  will  take  the  value  of  half  a  million  out  of  your  property, 
though — a  good  many  thousands  a  year  out  of  your  income." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say,"  cried  Anstress,  "that  I  have  been  cheating  the 
Government  out  of — I  beg  your  pardon,  Mr.  Jeffreys,  of  course  you  can't 
mean  that — I  am  so  stupid!" 

Mr.  Jeffreys  wisely  turned  to  something  else,  after  having  given  John  a 
searching  look,  for,  to  tell  the  truth,  he  was  a  little  fearful  that  John  was 
already  as  much  of  a  doctrinaire  as  Anstress  threatened  to  be. 

"Here,"  said  he,  "is  a  statement  of  your  lands  and  tenements" 

"What!  do  I  own  houses,  too?"  she  exclaimed. 

"Whole  streets  of  them." 

"Do  I?     Why,  how  rich  I  must  be!" 

"Yes,  very  rich*,  Anstress.  And  these  are  part  of  your  most  profitable 
possessions.  Your  father  obtained  mortgages  of  many  of  them,  in  payment 


466  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

of  some  outstanding  bill,  and  so,  one  by  one,  a  large  part  of  the  neighbor- 
hood falling  into  his  hands,  he  purchased  the  rest,  to  have  it  all  under  his  con- 
trol." 

"Ah,  it  must  have  been  a  poor  neighborhood,  then?" 

"Quite  poor — quite.  Your  father's  grocery  was  about  in  its  center  when 
he  begun  "- 

"My  father's — I  thought  papa  was  a  wholesale  merchant." 

"So  he  was,  certainly,  afterward.     A  wholesale  grocer  and  liquor-dealer. ' ' 

"Was  he?" 

"But  wealth  obliterates  all  distinctions,  my  child.  To  become  enor- 
mously rich  is  a  sort  of  death  in  the  old  Adam,  and  resurrection  among  the 
proud  and  long-descended  families.  And  at  the  time  of  his  death  he  was  a 
banker,  and  running  great  lines  of  steamships  and  the  whole  of  a  Western 
railway. ' ' 

"I  don't  know  as  I  care  about  that,"  said  Anstress.  "It  doesn't  make 
any  difference  in  our  country,  you  know,  whether  you  are  grocers  or  idlers. ' ' 

"Doesn't  it?"  said  Mr.  Jeffreys. 

"But  about  the  houses?"  asked  Anstress. 

"The  houses — yes.  They  are  all  of  the  poorer  class,  of  course,  but  yield- 
ing better  incomes  than  better  buildings  do?" 

"Whereabouts  are  they?"  asked  Anstress,  suddenly  shivering  a^little,  she 
knew  not  why. 

"Conduit  and  Messuage  streets,  both  sides;  places  you  never  saw,  my 
dear. ' 

"Is  it  possible?"  Anstress  cried  out.  "Mine! — those  dens! — oh,  I  felt 
what  was  coming!  When  I  said  the  landlord  deserved —  Ami — is  my  father 
responsible  for  that  fever,  those  white  women,  those  deformed  children  ? 
Do  we  make  money  out  of  their  wretchedness?  coin  their  groans" 

"Anstress,  you  surprise  me,"  said  Mr.  Jeffreys. 

"Oh,  I  had  rather  be  one  of  them  than  stand  in  my  place  to-day!  Why 
did  you  let  me,  sir — why  did  you  let  me — swelling  my  wealth  with  their  rents, 
and  that  child  starving!  Oh,  what  did  they  make  me  rich  for,  and  leave  me 
such  another  inheritance?  It  poisons  all  the  rest — it  poisons  life!  Oh,  John, 
what  makes  you  silent?  what  shall  I  do?"  And  her  voice  broke  down  in  a 
wild  fit  of  weeping,  that  neither  John  nor  Mr.  Jeffreys  could  check,  and  she 
ran  to  her  own  room  and  locked  herself  in,  and  was  seen  no  more  by  any  one, 
until  she  sent  for  a  servant,  that  day. 

It  was  late  in  the  evening  when  Anstress  crept  down-stairs  again,  and, 
finding  no  one  in  the  drawing-room,  went  into  the  cozy  little  flower-room 
beyond,  where  she  was  pretty  sure  to  find  John  reading  among  his  brilliant 


STEPPING    STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  467 

pelargoniums  and  sweet  geraniums.     And  there  he  was,  not  reading-,   but 
busy  with  pencils  and  sheets  of  cardboard. 

"I  hope  you  did  not  think  me  a  wild  barbarian  this  morning,  John?" 
said  Anstress,  timidly.  "I  know  Mr.  Jeffreys  did.  But  indeed  I  couldn't 
help  it,  and  it  was  so  sudden — and — oh,  John!  I  was  down  in  Messuage 
street,  and  saw  a  child  just  dead  there  not  two  hours  before!" 

"You  were,  my  darling?     You?     Alone  in  that  brutal  region?" 

"It  has  no  business  to  be  a  brutal  region.  If  anything  had  happened  to 
me  there,  it  would  only  have  been  a  sort  of  poetical  justice,  a  righteous 
retribution.  But  James  was  with  me,"  said  Anstress,  as  if  it  were  necessary 
to  believe  his  apprehensions  concerning  her  danger.  "I  can't  tell  you  the 
dreadful  things  I  saw!"  she  added,  with  a  sobbing  breath.  "I  didn't  know 
there  were  such  things.  There  was  a  woman  on  the  floor  stupid  with 
drink,  there  was — oh,  John! — But  there,  I  can't  talk  about  it.  I  suppose  Mr. 
Jeffreys  is  very  angry  with  me?"  she  added,  in  a  tone  half  question,  half 
assertion,  but  one  full  of  relief  at  having  left  her  recent  topic. 

"No,  not  angry,"  said  John.  "Something  puzzled — never  having  looked 
at  it  in  your  light.  He  and  I  have  frequently  talked  about  it — I  urging  some- 
thing to  be  done,  he  not  considering  that  he  had  any  right,  or  that  it  was 
possible  to  improve  the  condition  of  such  people." 

"Have  you,  John?"  A  light  swept  over  Anstress'  cloudy  face.  "Oh, 
John,"  she  said,  "I  am  afraid  I  have  been  very  ungrateful!  But  there  is 
something  I  must  tell  you — something  that  I  mean  to  do,  at  any  rate ;  and 
you  must  let  me  know  if  you  don't  think  it  best."  She  paused  a  moment. 
She  did  not  like  to  tell  him  that  she  was  absolutely  resolved  to  do  it,  let  him 
think  of  it  what  he  would,  although,  unconsciously,  both  to  herself  and  to 
him,  not  measuring  her  words,  she  had  said  little  less  than  that;  and, 
whether  or  no,  she  could  not  tell  him  that  she  had  made  the  light  in  which  he 
might  consider  her  new  proposition  a  test  of  his  affection,  a  touchstone  of  his 
honesty,  an  answer  to  the  question  that  had  harassed  her  and  fevered  her  by 
fits  and  starts  since  yesterday — the  question  as  to  whether  it  were  her  fortune 
or  herself  that  John  desired  to  possess. 

"I  am  listening,  dear,"  said  John,  as  she  hesitated,  giving  her  his  chair; 
and  half  seating  himself  on  a  corner  of  the  table  before  her.  "What  is  it 
troubles  your  mind?  Confession  is  good  for  it,  as  you  have  heard  say." 

/  "You  know,  John,"  she  began  a  little  doubtfully,  "that  if  my  father  kept 
a  corner  grocery  in  the  beginning  and  obtained  possession  of  all  these  houses 
in  Messuage  and  tha^t  other  street  by  means  of  the  bills  that  were  run  up 
there — you  know  what  that  means — people  who  own  that  sort  of  houses  do 
not  mortgage  them  for  bread ;  I  have  asked  James  and  Nora  about  the  habits 


468  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS, 

of  such  people  in  that  relation,  and  they  have  told  me  a  good  deal — and  it 
means  that  they  drank,  and  grew  thriftless,  and  the  bill  at  the  corner  grocery 
discouraged  them,  and  they  drank  more  and  it  was  'chalked  down'  to  them 
till  the  bill  was  swollen  large  enough  to  cover  house  and  home,  and  heaven 
only  knows  what  became  of  them  then!  And  such  bills  as  those  were  the 
foundation  of  all  my  fortune.  I  don't  believe  my  father  realized  what  he 
was  doing— for  every  one  says  he  was  a  good  and  just  man — do  you,  John  ?" 

"No,  darling." 

"Now  of  course  I  can  never  find  those  people — they  are  lost,  they  were 
lost  long  ago.  But  the  people  who  live  in  Messuage  and  Conduit  streets  to- 
day are  their  representatives;  and  it  is  the  duty  of  my  father's  heir  to  take 
care  of  them  in  different  fashion  from  the  way  they  are  being  cared  for  now. 
I  don't  want  to  be  rash  or  quixotic,  and  after  thinking  about  how  I  can  relieve 
them  almost  all  day  the  best  way  that  has  occurred  to  me  is  this :  To  buy 
land  enough  in  the  neighborhood  on  which  to  build  nice  tenement-houses, 
and  let  them  have  them  for  the  same  rent  they  pay  now,  or  less ;  and  then 
tear  down  these  disgraceful  sheds,  out  of  which  we  shall  first  have  moved 
the  tenants  into  the  new  houses,  and  after  that,  build  nice  brick  blocks  in  their 
place  as  fast  as  may  be,  with  good  water  and  drains  and  sleeping-rooms,  and 
every  facility  for  health  and  necessary  comfort  that  rich  people  have  and  that 
in  a  city  poor  people  ought  to  have  just  as  much ;  and  so  go  on  until  both 
sides  of  both  these  streets  are  clean  and  wholesome.  What  do  you  think, 
John?" 

"You  can  never  hope  to  have  your  money  back,  Anstress,"  said  John 
looking  at  her  steadily. 

Anstress  turned  pale  at  the  words.  The  money  was  nothing  to  her  any 
more  than  if  she  had  been  a  destitute  girl  without  a  cent  for  whom  John  would 
work  and  care  and  keep  away  the  wolf.  Was  it  after  all  the  very  worst  that 
she  had  feared  ?  Was  she  weighing  John  in  the  balance  and  finding  him 
wanting  ?  Was  he  going  to  endeavor  to  prevent  this  for  the  paltry  sake  of 
that  money? 

"If  you  carry  out  this  plan,  Anstress,"  said  John,  "and  place  the  rents  of 
the  new  buildings  at  as  low  a  rate  as  the  tenants  now  pay,  or  rather,  I  should 
say,  at  exactly  what  they  now  pay,  deducting  repairs,  insurance  and  taxes,  you 
will  receive  about  one  per  cent. ,  or  one  and  a  half  on  your  investment,  which 
would  generally  be  considered  madness  in  relation  to  any  purpose,  letting 
alone  the  disposal  of  perishable  property.  The  erection  of  the  buildings  will, 
besides,  absorb  nearly  the  whole  of  your  fortune.  And  I  presume  the  scheme 
would  be  everywhere  thought  of  the  wildest  and  most  wanton,  and  be  frowned 
on  by  capitalists  as  threatening  to  produce  trouble  for  other  landlords,  and 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS.  469 

there  would  be  annoying  paragraphs  in  the  newspapers  concerning  the  dis- 
sipation of  a  great  fortune,  and  vexations  without  number." 

"But  we  needn't  care  for  any  of  that,  need  we,  John?" 

"Not  in  the  least." 

"And  there  is  no  law  to  hinder  us?" 

"Certainly  not.' 

"And  then,  what  do  you  say  to  it,  John?" 

"Here  is  a  plan  for  the  buildings,  that  I  have  been  drawing  this  after- 
noon"  

"What!  Oh,  John!  have  you  really" — and  Anstress  fell  upon  his  neck 
with  tears  and  kisses.  "How  good  you  are!"  she  cried.  "How  wicked  I 
am!  I  would  rather  have  it  than  a  thousand  fortunes!" 

"My  love,"  said  John,  smoothing  her  tumbled  hair,  "could  you  think  I 
would  object  to  this  plan?  That,  as  a  matter  of  personal  pride  I  would  not 
hail  any  such  escape  from  the  suspicion  that  must  always  fasten  on  a  man  in 
such  circumstances,  of  having  married  a  woman  for  her  money?  And  that,  on 
other  grounds,  I  should  not  deem  it  the  best  and  most  desirable  thing  that 
you  should  use  the  means  of  relieving  suffering  which  God  has  given  you?" 

"How  good  you  are,  John!"  repeated  Anstress.  "Oh!  I  never  knew 
how  much  I  loved  you!  I  don't  deserve  you!" 

"Never  mind,  my  darling;  you  deserve  some  one  a  great  deal  better.  And 
now  let  us  talk  about  the  buildings,  and  understand  exactly  what  we  want." 

"We  want  everything  plain  but  good,  John;  the  rooms,  for  instance, 
high  enough  to  give  good  air  to  breathe,  but  not  too  high  to  keep  warm  in 
winter;  and  finished  in  hard  wood,  so  as  to  avoid  perpetual  paint,  but  not  in 
black-walnut  or  mahogany,  or  any  foolishness." 

"Very  well.  That  is  my  plan,  too.  Built  solidly,  around  a  hollow 
square,  with  cellarage  in  which  each  family  has  a  share  that  it  is  not  possible 
for  another  family  to  interfere  with ;  divided  into  tenements  of  varying  size, 
but  so  arranged  that  there  shall  be  a  living-room,  and  a  sleeping-room  for 
every  two  persons,  with  water  and  gas  and  tubs  set,  and  all  such  requisite 
conveniences;  each  floor  having  an  entrance  separate  from  the  other  floors, 
and  an  exterior  elevator  to  lift  provisions  and  coals,  and  take  down  garbage; 
and  plenty  of  drying-room  for  the  clothes  of  every  family,  on  the  piazza,  run- 
ning round  the  backs  of  the  building  on  the  hollow  square ;  and  the  hollow 
square  itself  to  be  common  property  for  such  of  the  tenants  of  the  first  floor 
as  choose  to  sit  there,  or  to  raise  a  grapevine,  or  a  row  of  sweet  corn,  or  a  bed 
of  flowera  Here  are  rooms,  too,  for  a  janitor,  who,  in  consideration  of  his 
rent,  shall  preserve  order  in  the  building,  and  collect  the  rents;  and,  for  the 
rest,  the  act  of  obliging  the  tenants  not  to  abuse  the  houses,  but  to  keep  them 


470  STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 

decently  and  decorously,  will  be  as  good  a  civilizer  and  reformer  as  you  can 
desire ;  it  will  give  the  men  that  ambition  and  the  women  that  pride  which  are 
found  to  be  marvelous  supports  in  well-doing,  and  by  insisting  upon  it,  your 
janitor  will  presently  make  a  residence  in  these  buildings  a  sure  sign  of  re- 
spectability." 

"And  when  a  single  person  has  a  share  of  the  world's  goods  so  far  ex- 
ceeding most  other  people's  shares,  John,  don't  you  think  that  one  per  cent, 
is  enough  to  receive?" 

"Yes,  I  do — in  equity.  But  then  I  may  not  be  a  good  judge,  for  I  have 
some  radical  theories  about  the  right  of  a  single  person  to  shut  up  the  use 
and  accumulation  of  money  beyond  his  own  power  to  enjoy ;  that  is  to  say,  if 
a  person,  with  his  family,  can  enjoy  everything  the  world  at  present  affords 
of  reasonable  luxury  and  comfort  at  ten  thousand  a  year,  I  am  not  sure  that 
he  has  a  right  to  add  another  ten  thousand  a  year  to  his  idle  hoard,  instead  of 
distributing  it  to  those  in  need  as  it  comes  in." 

"And  one  per  cent,  is  the  salary  you  would  receive  for  taking  care  of  my 
fortune  for  me,  is  it  not?" 

"I  think  you  can  take  care  of  it  yourself,  with  a  little  advice  now  and 
then.  I  shall  practice  my  profession,  my  dear,  and  the  salary  I  expect  to  have 
for  my  assistance  is  love  and  the  sweet  services  of  my^wife. "  Anstress' 
blushes,  as  he  spoke,  were  not  those  of  maidenly  modesty  so  much  as  of 
mortification  to  think  she  had  so  misjudged  the  best  and  noblest  of  lovers. 
But  she  conquered  them  by  the  aid  of  some  shame-faced  kisses  and  embraces, 
and  after  this  skirmish  with  her  color,  returned  valiantly  to  the  business  in 
hand. 

"How  much  will  one  per  cent,  of  the  property  be?"  she  asked. 
"About  thirty  thousand." 

"And  that  will  certainly  give  us  everything  we  can  possibly  want,  and  a 
great  deal  more  for  charity  besides,  won't  it?" 
"Everything." 

"And  are  you  quite  sure,  John,  that  you  shall  be  satisfied  with  this  ar- 
rangement?" 

"Are  you  quite  sure,  Anstress,  that  you  will  be  yourself?  The  owner  of 
a  large  property  must  remember  that  he  is  not  acting  for  himself  only,  but 
for  those  that  come  after  him.  And  when  his  property  comes  to  be  divided 
among  heirs,  those  heirs,  brought  up  in  the  habit  of  having  all  that  the  whole 
income  could  yield,  are  suddenly  reduced  to  very  different  circumstances,  with  a 
thousand  wants  created  and  fostered  which  now  they  are  unable  to  gratify." 

"People  of  great  wealth,  then,  must  live  as  if  the  division  of  their  prop- 
erty had  already  been  made,  and  they  had  but  one  share  of  it.  But, 


STEPPING   STONES  TO   HAPPINESS. 


whether  they  do  or  not,  I  don't  think  it  is  desirable  for  people  to  begin  life 
any  better  off  than  you  are  now,  John — do  you?  It  crushes  all  aspiration  and 
self-discipline  and  self-denial.  Don't  you  think  so,  John?" 

"It  is  very  possible,"  said  John,  smiling  at  her  rosy  enthusiasm. 

"I  wonder  what  Mr.  Jeffreys  will  say  to  all  this,"  added  Anstress,  pres- 
ently, and  laughing  in  spite  of  herself  while  picturing  her  late  guardian's 
horror  at  her  intentions. 

"He  will  be  struck  with  consternation,"  said  John,  "and  will  think  at 
first  that  we  both  ought  to  have  strait-jackets  instead  of  wedding-garments. 
But  I  think  if  you  leave  it  to  me,  I  can  bring  him  round,  and  even  make  him 
think  it  was  his  own  suggestion,  and  so  secure  his  assistance  and  experience, 
things  not  to  be  laughed  at.  As  for  the  rest  of  the  world,  no  matter.  Per- 
haps your  action  may  teach  them" 

"Our  action,  John!" 

"Perhaps  our  action,  dear,  may  teach  them  that  all  this  wealth  which 
they  call  theirs  is  really  not  theirs  at  all.  But  that  the  earth  is  the  Lord's, 
and  the  fullness  thereof ;  that  they  cannot  take  away  this  wealth  with  them 
when  they  go ;  that  they  are  merely  stewards  of  it  for  the  time  being,  and 
must  administer  it  to  the  Master's  ends." 

"John,  dear,fcyou  ought  to  be  a  minister,"  said  Anstress.  "Do  you 
really  love  me  very  much?" — the  cheeks  were  like  two  carnations  now.  "For 
if  you  would  like  it — you  won't  think  strange,  my  saying  so?  you  asked  me 
once,  you  know — the  day  the  corner-stone  of  the  first  building  is  laid  shall 
be  our  wedding-day."  And  that  was  the  end  of  the  expectations  of  the  good 
outside  people,  and  there  is  to-day  nothing  but  an  outcry  over  two  such  misers 
as  John  and  Anstress  Jeffreys. 


47*  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


CHAPTER  EIGHTEENTH. 


The  Genial  Temper. 

Oh  blest  with  temper  whose  unclouded  ray 
Can  make  to-morrow  cheerful  as  to-day. 

— Pope. 

Blessed  is  the  healthy  nature  ;  it  is  the  coherent,  sweetly  confidential,  not  incoherent, 
self-distracting,  self-destructive  one ! — Carlyle. 

Think  not  thy  word,  and  thine  alone,  must  be  right. 

— Sophocles. 

Remember,  when  the  judgment's  weak  the  prejudice  is  strong. 

— Kane  CfHara, 
To  look  up  and  not  down, 
To  look  forward  and  not  back, 
To  look  out  and  not  in,  and 
To  lend  a  hand. 

— Edward  Everett  Hale. 

She  was  good  as  she  was  fair, 

None — none  on  earth  above  her  ! 
As  pure  in  thought  as  angels  are, 

To  know  her  was  to  love  her. 

— Rogers. 

No  falsehood  can  endure 
Touch  of  celestial  temper. 

— Milton. 

The  world  is  good,  and  the  people  are  good, 
And  we're  all  good  fellows  together. 

—John  O'Keeft. 

Ill  habits  gather  by  unseen  degrees, 
As  brooks  make  rivers,  rivers  run  to  seas. 

— Dry  den . 
'Tis  well  said  again, 
And  'tis  a  kind  of  good  deed  to  say  well: 
And  yet  words  are  no  deeds. 

— Shakespeare. 

Give  unto  me  made  lowly  wise 
The  spirit  of  self-sacrifice. 

—  Wordsworth . 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  473 

Manlike  is  it  to  fall  into  sin, 
Fiendlike  is  it  to  dwell  therein, 
Christlike  is  it  for  sin  to  grieve. 
Godlike  is  it  all  sin  to  leave. 

— Friedrich  Von  Logan. 

Before  we  reach  our  ideal  shores  of  happiness  we  shall  have  learned  to 
make  sure  of  something  besides  the  material  advantages  of  life  either  for  our- 
selves or  others  ;  we  shall  have  learned  to  make  ourselves  capable  of  receiving 
the  ideal  happiness,  we  shall  have  learned  to  cherish  a  sunny  temper,  and  in 
doing  that  we  shall  also  have  learned  to  love  humanity,  and  to  put  ourselves  in 
relation  io  the  claims  of  others,  in  some  degree  if  not  altogether  out  of  sight. 
Many  individuals  possess  what  may  be  called  an  aptitude  to  suffer  injury.  They 
not  only  accept  it  at  every  turn  and  receive  it  at  every  pore,  but  actually  seem 
to  hunt  it  up  and  lie  in  wait  for  it.  Nothing  falls  that  does  not  hit  them ;  noth- 
ing breaks  that  does  not  hurt  them  ;  nothing  happens  anyway  that  they  do  not 
reap  a  golden  harvest  of  wrong  from  it.  These  people  are  miserable,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course — that  goes  without  saying;  but  they  would  be  utterly  and  hope- 
lessly miserable  if  they  could  not  at  any  moment  scrape  the  substance  of  an 
injury  together  to  solace  some  heavy  hour  destitute  of  other  excitement.  If 
somebody  has  not  backbitten  them,  somebody  is  just  about  to  do  so;  if  some- 
body has  not  cheated  them,  somebody  would  like  to  cheat  them,  and  if  the 
number  of  the  ill-intentioned  living  is  insufficient  to  feed  the  appetite  for 
boasted  suffering,  there  is  always  an  ancestry — fortunate  thing  ! — to  fall  back 
upon,  whose  wrong-doings  have  been  innumerable,  and  the  results  of  whose 
wrong- doings  are  incalculable. 

Of  course  these  injured  beings  never  do  anything  to  provoke  injury.  They 
never  insinuate  or  whine;  they  never  openly  or  underhandedly  charge  the  in- 
nocent with  outrage ;  they  never  weary  the  patient  with  complaining,  or  repay 
good  intentions  with  unceasing  reproach,  or  "nag "the  worm  till  it  turns;  they 
never  abuse  anybody's  friends ;  they  never  criticise  anybody's  person ;  they 
never  make  themselves  so  disagreeable  that  people  avoid  them  and  escape 
them  in  self-defense;  and  they  are  never  by  any  means  so  insolent  over  imag- 
inary injuries  that  it  becomes  impossible  for  those  having  any  self-respect  at 
all  to  explain  the  circumstances  and  do  away  with  the  error-  they  never  in 
effect  do  anything  but  conduct  themselves  like  suffering  saints  waiting  for  their 
translation. 

Why,  then,  it  may  be  asked,  should  anybody  want  to  injure  them  ?  But 
there  is  the  mystery,  the  problem  they  are  always  trying  to  solve,  and  whose 
solution,  though  they  reach  it  in  twenty  days,  will  never  be  other  than  to  the 
satisfaction  of  their  self-esteem;  and  they  invariably  fall  back  on  a  comforting 


474  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

belief  that  they  receive  the  injury  because  of  envy  of  their  superior  virtues, 
grace,  beauties,  or  position. 

An  Unpleasant  Idiosyncrasy. 

These  people,  it  may  be  seen,  are  possessed  of  a  singular  sort  of  folly,  if  it 
may  be  so  mildly  denominated,  and  it  be  not  in  reality  an  idiosyncrasy  border- 
ing on  the  nature  of  insanity.  There  is  wisdom  ordinarily  in  doing  the  utmost 
to  have  the  world  believe  you  to  be  well  thought  of,  held  in  esteem,  and  treated 
with  consideration.  If  people  in  general  observe  that  you  have  the  countenance 
of  others,  you  are  tolerably  sure  to  stand  well  in  their  favor;  but  if  others  are 
found  to  regard  you  as  worth  nothing  but  injury,  the  natural  inference  may  be 
that  nothing  but  injury  is  what  you  deserve.  It  is  only  the  beggars  that  exhibit 
their  sores,  and  those  that  have  any  common  sense  with  their  vanity,  and  wish 
the  world  to  hold  whatever  is  said  or  thought  of  them  of  consequence,  instead 
of  parading  the  ill  conceit  that  others  have  of  them,  will  take  every  opportunity 
of  making  manifest  precisely  the  contrary,  and  swelling  their  self-importance 
b'/  the  means  of  it.  But  no  such  idea  enters  the  minds  of  these  unfortunates; 
their  vanity  feeds  on  their  martyrdom. 

It  is  not  always,  either,  that  they  are  entirely  satisfied  with  the  ills  they 
have;  they  would  like  to  fancy  themselves  receiving  some  positive  and  tremen- 
dous wrong.  If  somebody  would  slap  their  faces  they  would  have  real  exulta- 
tion ;  if  they  could  only  be  turned  out  of  house  and  home,  it  would  be  triumph ; 
if  their  wives  would  run  away,  if  their  husbands  would  try  to  take  their  lives, 
bliss — bliss,  that  is,  of  their  melancholy  kind — could  hardly  go  farther  with 
them.  

Love  of  Injury. 

In  what  the  enjoyment  of  this  sort  of  emotion  consists  it  is  not  easy  to 
say,  nor  even  to  imagine.  If  it  were  in  the  exhibition  to  spectators  of  the 
patience  and  meekness  and  fortitude  with  which  the  wrongs,  real  or  fancied,  are 
borne,  one  might  comprehend  something  of  it  in  view  of  the  self-complacency 
gratified  by  such  exhibition.  But  as  the  spectators  see  nothing  of  the  sort,  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  see  every  opposite  method  used — not  fortitude,  but  whines, 
not  meekness,  but  defiance,  and  no  other  patience  than  that  simulated  thing 
which  is  a  mockery  of  those  whom  it  accuses — it  remains  unexplained  why 
there  are  people  in  the  world  who  love  to  be  injured,  and  who  are  happier  the 
more  injured  they  are — people  who  know  that  no  one  possesses  such  power  of 
creating  intense  discomfort  in  the  hearts  and  souls  of  those  that  mean  to  do 
right,  such  power  to  annoy,  to  humble,  to  worry,  to  sadden,  to  distress  in  every 
way,  and  who  do  not  hesitate  to  exercise  this  power  to  its  fullest  extent,  till  one 


STEPPING   STONES   TO     HAPPINESS.  475 

is  ready  to  declare  that  there  is  no  such  instrument  of  torment  in  any  home  as  one 
of  these  martyrs.  For  do  what  you  will  you  can  not  avoid  given  the  offense  for 
which  they  lie  in  wait.  They  are  always  on  the  lookout  for  a  slight;  they  scent 
it  from  afar  as  vultures  scent  their  prey,  and  it  is  difficult  to  say  when  they  are 
best  pleased,  whether  in  enjoying  a  sense  of  triumph  when  courted  or  flattered, 
or  in  nursing  the  sense  of  burning  wrong  when  overlooked  and  forgotten. 
They  imagine  the  slight,  and  believe  in  it,  when  it  does  not  exist ;  and  when  it  is 
really  impossible  to  believe  in  it,  content  themselves  by  picturing  what  the  case 
would  be  if  it  did  exist,  until  the  suitable  emotions  are  kindled  in  their 
breast,  and  they  have  the  dramatic  species  of  pleasure  nearly  the  same  as  if  it 
had  been  founded  on  fact. 

,  Perhaps  it  is  their  friend  who  has  "slighted"  them,  omitted  the  personal 
mention  of  their  name  from  some  general  invitation,  forgotten  in  some  pressure 
to  send  them  cards  at  all,  inadvertently  turned  the  back  upon  them  in  the 
crowd,  accidentally  carried  off  a  suitor,  and  accidentally  swept  them  a  trium- 
phant glance;  coolness,  distrust,  icy  discomfort,  stalk  upon  the  scene,  to  be  fol- 
lowed after  a  time  by  a  sort  of  slurred-over  forgiveness  that  circumstances, 
whether  of  affection  or  convenience,  make  necessary.  But  perhaps  it  is  not 
their  friend,  but  your  friend,  that  has  done  this  deed,  and  woe  is  you  for  the 
distress  and  annoyance  that  then  become  yours  through  the  agency  of  the  indi- 
vidual whom  your  friend  has  outraged,  until  fresh  outrage  wipes  out  the  mem- 
ory of  the  old  one. 

To  be  slighted — that  gives  one  an  opportunity  for  eloquence  in  stating  the 
reasons  why  one  should  not  have  been  slighted,  or  else  for  assumption  of 
humility  in  stating  the  reasons  why  the  slight  was  not  undeserved.  It  gives 
one  the  opportunity,  too,  of  feeding  an  old  grudge  with  the  indulgence  of  a 
righteous  indignation  called  for  by  self-respect,  of  nourishing  a  hearty  spite  by 
the  recital  of  any  piquant  scandal  concerning  the  giver  of  the  slight  that  other- 
wise it  might  not  be  permissible  to  recite,  or  else  of  a  lofty  show  of  magna- 
nimity by  merely  hinting  at  the  knowledge  of  such  scandal,  and  without  con- 
senting to  gratify  the  tantalized  curiosity  of  the  listener  ;  and  at  all  events  it 
allows  one  to  make  an  inventory  of  one's  virtues,  all  by  one's  self,  in  wondering 
why  an  individual  possessing  such  qualities  should  be  made  the  victim  of  such 
wrong,  and  when  the  inventory  is  made,  to  feel  doubly  wronged,  and  to  render 
uncomfortable  every  member  of  the  household  that  does  not  entirely  concur  in 
the  view  taken  of  the  slight.  

Fancied  Slights. 

It  is  really  both  amusing  and  amazing  to  see  how  these  fabulous  injuries 
can  be  conjured  up  and  made  the  most  of  with  a  morbid  enjoyment,  when  every 


476  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

consideration  of  proper  pride  and  self-respect  ought  to  lead  them  to  think  it 
would  be  impossible  for  any  one  to  dream  of  such  a  thing  as  slighting  their 
claims  to  attention.  Why  should  one  slight  them  ?  Are  they  coarse,  gross, 
vulgar,  ill-bred,  ill-mannered,  ill-natured,  so  plain  as  to  be  disgusting,  so  sim- 
ple as  to  be  a  bore,  so  spiteful  as  to  be  dangerous,  so  ignorant  as  to  be  a  laugh- 
ing-stock, so  low-born  and  of  so  low  associations  as  to  be  contaminating  ?N  And 
if  for  none  of  these,  for  what  other  reasons  can  they  be  slighted  ?  From  personal 
dislike  ?  Yet  why  should  one  dislike  them  but  for  such  or  kindred  qualities  ? 
From  envy  ?  One  who  supposes  that  hardly  makes  the  listener  a  convert  to 
belief  in  superior  qualities  calculated  to  excite  envy;  for  one  will  not  be 
envied  unkindly,  if  rich,  unless  an  unkind  display  of  riches  is  flaunted  in  the 
face  of  those  who  have  none ;  if  well  educated,  unless  contempt  is  shown  for 
those  less  fortunate;  if  virtuous,  unless  the  virtue  is  self-righteous;  if  beauti- 
ful, unless  the  beauty  is  spoiled  by  consciousness,  flippancy,  heartlessness,  and 
the  assumption  of  "top-lofty"  airs.  No,  indeed;  one  would  have  an  exceed- 
ingly erroneous  opinion  of  the  very  nature  of  society  if  it  were  for  a  moment 
supposed  that  virtue,  beauty,  learning,  good  fortune,  were  not  welcomed 
eagerly  by  it  in  the  persons  of  the  happy  owners.  There  is  not  so  much  of  any 
of  these  fine  things  abroad  in  the  world  that  any  can  be  dispensed  with;  they 
are  the  very  elements  of  that  charming  society  that  feeds  the  wit  and  delights 
the  eye,  the  forces  that  make  it  lovely  and  of  good  repute,  and  wherever  they 
are  seen  they  are  gladly  welcomed  and  made  a  part  of  it.  Just  as  a  hostess 
would  hail  with  satisfaction  the  acquisition  of  a  choice  prima  donna,  with  her 
singing,  at  her  evening  entertainment,  so  will  society  hail  with  satisfaction  the 
advent  of  any  who  can  add  by  one  iota  to  its  pleasure;  and  if  one  is  not  hailed, 
if  one  is  slighted,  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  one  is  destitute  of  the  means  of  af- 
fording this  pleasure. 

Quid  Pro  Quo. 

For  if  one  receives  pleasure  from  society  one  must  in  return  render  pleas- 
ure to  society;  and  before  complaining  of  slights  it  is  no  more  than  just  to  sit 
down  and  inquire  what  right  one  has  to  other  treatment.  Has  one  a  home  and 
the  means  of  entertaining  in  it,  and  so  of  being  a  valuable  factor  in  this  society 
and  returning  something  of  all  that  is  given  ?  If  not  that,  then  has  one  such 
beauty  as  will  be  a  perpetual  feast  at  which  the  gazer  asks  no  more  ?  Or  if  not 
that,  has  one  intellect  to  lead,  to  control,  to  illuminate  society,  to  add  to  its 
gayety,  to  lend  its  instruction,  to  direct  it  toward  noble  pursuits  ?  If  one,  in 
fact,  has  nothing  at  all  to  give,  and  only  the  power  of  holding  up  one's  pitcher 
to  receive,  should  one  feel  entitled  to  complain  if  the  pitcher  be  not  always  full 


STEPPING   STONES  TO    HAPPINESS.  477 

and  running  over  ?  The  inference  is  plain  that  one  rather  greedily  holds  too 
big  a  pitcher  for  one's  share,  and  that  less  demand  and  less  expectation  would 
not  find  themselves  slighted. 

A  jealous  disposition  and  an  inordinate  vanity  are  the  things  at  the  root  of 
the  whole  matter.  The  disposition  that  is  not  jealous  is  not  perpetually  hunting 
for  hurts;  takes  life  as  it  comes;  aware  of  ill-will  towards  none,  so  suspicious  of 
ill-will  from  none;  if  overlooked,  seeing  or  supposing  some  perfectly  good 
reason  for  it,  desirous  rather  of  the  comfort  of  others  than  of  the  flattery  of 
self;  not  too  sensitive  to  wounds  which  are  like  the  bruises  of  "  dead  men's 
pinches;"  and  always  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  old  king's  wisdom  which  de- 
clares, "Better  is  a  handful  with  quietness  than  both  hands  full  with  travail  and 
vexation  of  spirit."  And  the  nature  whose  restless  vanity  is  not  always  expect- 
ing and  claiming  will  never  smart  for  want  of  recognition  of  the  claims,  will 
scarcely  dream  of  rights  before  the  rights  are  acknowledged,  can  not  live,  in- 
deed, in  an  atmosphere  darkened  by  absurd  conjecturings  and  imputings  of 
evil  intent.  And  to  sum  up  the  whole  matter,  one  would  suppose  that  the 
utter  want  of  good  taste  in  this  complaint  of  fancied  slights  would  repel  the 
inordinate  vanity  as  much  as  any  other  breach  of  the  canons;  and  if  one  must 
needs  fancy  one's  self  slighted  at  every  turn,  one  should  go  into  training  to  get 
the  better  of  the  tendency,  and  should  that  be  found  impossible,  at  least  have 
the  sense  to  keep  quiet  about  it,  and  not  to  vaunt  one's  shame.  There  is  so 
much  pain  and  trouble  that  is  real  in  our  few  years  of  active  life  that  it  seems 
a  sorry  thing  to  add  to  it  by  all  the  weight  of  imagined  trouble ;  and  we  should 
perhaps  cease  to  care  for  such  selfish  tribulation  if  we  once  properly  mused 
upon 

"  the  little  lives  of  men. 
And  how  they  mar  this  little  by  their  feuds." 


The  Undisciplined  Temper. 

For  living  in  the  house  with  these  and  such  as  these  is  like  being  stung  to 
death  by  flies.  There  is  nothing  calculated  to  work  such  havoc  with  nerves,  for 
you  are  in  the  perpetual  uncertainty  and  unrest  of  never  knowing  how  the 
simplest  action  is  going  to  be  construed  by  one  whose  temper  is  undisciplined, 
or  what  may  be  the  consequences;  and  you  dance  on  this  mental  and  moral 
tight-rope  till  every  point  is  strained  and  sore,  trembling  now  in  momentary 
expectation  of  an  outburst,  springing  up  in  relief  that  it  did  not  come,  bowing 
beneath  it  when  it  does ;  and  if  you  do  not  at  last  find  refuge  in  insanity,  it  is 
because  you  have  already  found  it  in  indifference  or  dislike. 

For  the  forms  of  this  undisciplined  temper  are  numberless  as  they  are 


478  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

oppressive ;  they  are  not  confined  to  that  with  the  too  quick  sense  of  injury ;  there 
is  the  simply  and  nakedly  tyrannical,  which  raises  the  lightest  whim  to  vision- 
ary importance  and  overbears  everything,  feelings,  scruples,  beliefs,  wishes, 
for  its  gratification.  And  the  worst  of  this  form  is  that  when  the  gratification  is 
assured  a  total  change  of  sky  takes  place,  the  offender  becomes  altogether 
sunny,  and  insists  upon  it  that  there  is  no  sweeter  temper  in  existence  than  the 
one  that  was  just  bursting  over  your  head,  and  proves  it  to  the  world  by  the  cir- 
cumstance that  you  who  have  just  been  outraged  and  trampled  upon  are  not 
feeling  so  sweet  and  sunny  yourself  as  might  be.  There  is  the  sinister  form 
of  ill-temper,  too,  which  works  underground,  flaring  up  at  last  like  brushwood 
at  the  touch  of  a  torch,  that  scorns  to  explain,  broods  over  wrongs  till  wholly 
mad,  whereupon  it  is  clothed  in  a  robe  of  fire,  and  its  poor  object  is  reduced  to 
the  condition  of  a  slave.  There,  too,  is  the  bitter  one  that  lets  the  aqua-fortis 
bite  deeper  and  deeper,  and  carries  a  raw  spot  that,  singularly  enough ,  causes 
you  to  feel  as  though  some  of  the  aqua-fortis  had  been  thrown  in  your  own  face. 
There  is  the  discontented  one,  that  wearies  heaven  and  earth  with  its  whine. 
There  is  the  severe  one,  with  which  the  cutting  tongue  is  a  weapon  that 
wounds  and  turns  in  the  wound,  sure  always  to  condemn  and  never  to  con- 
done. And  there  is  the  violent  one,  whose  bolts  fell  you  to  the  ground,  and  in 
dread  of  which  you  live  as  if  you  had  a  thunder-cloud  in  the  house.  And  then 
there  are  all  the  infinity  of  the  lesser  varieties  and  combinations  of  these,  with 
which,  to  quote  an  old  saying,  one  lives  "the  life  of  a  toad  under  a  harrow." 


The  Sinners  Themselves. 

Often  enough  trie  unfortunate  possessors  of  these  tempers  are  as  unhappy 
as  the  unfortunate  victims,  if  not  more  so,  for  they  live  in  a  state  of  burning 
discomfort  and  suffering  equal  to  that  which  they  inflict,  and  it  is  all  a  thousand 
times  aggravated  by  the  real  inner  knowledge  that  they  have  nobody  but  them- 
selves to  blame  for  it.  Every  outbreak  in  which  they  indulge,  and  the  habit  of 
which  has  grown  by  indulgence  uncontrollable  at  length,  has  to  be  followed  by 
a  corresponding  fit  of  remorse,  although,  sooth  to  say,  the  remorse  is  quite  as 
disagreeable  and  trying  to  the  first  victim  as  the  offense  before  it  was. 

But  these  sinners  are  of  a  class  that  assuredly  deserve  their  suffering-,  and 
they  do  not  by  any  means  deserve  pity  as  they  do  who  have  to  encounter  the 
blow,  are  subject  to  the  daily  torture,  and  live  and  move  and  have  their  being 
with  fluttering  heart  and  bated  breath  ;  and  if  they  do  deserve  it  they  do  not 
have  it.  One  thinks  with  far  more  interest  than  of  this  subject  of  his  own 
despotism  of  the  poor  soul  who  is  harrowed  beyond  bounds  by  the  testy, 


LOVE  IS  A   POTENT  SHIELD  AGAINST  MANY  TROUBLES. 


(479) 


480  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

touchy  mate  to  which  it  is  chained,  whether  it  be  the  husband  or  the  wife  of  a 
house,  the  parent  or  child,  sister  or  brother,  mistress  or  maid — the  soul  origi- 
nally inoffensive,  glad  and  gladdening,  that  has  been  stirred  to  its  depths  by  these 
cruel  tempests,  and  made  turbid  with  sense  of  injustice  and  resentment,  till 
daily  life  is  shipwrecked  on  desert  islands,  with  gall  and  wormwood  for  all 
banqueting,  with  all  sunshine  darkened,  all  affection  gone  to  the  bottom,  all 
sound  impulses  overwhelmed  and  turned  to  evil  things,  and  with  whom,  under 
the  daily  and  hourly  wrongs,  hatred  has  taken  the  place  of  everything  but  bald 
duty. 

It  is  a  perilous  thing  to  belong,  in  another  way,  to  such  ill-doers  as  the 
owners  of  the  tempers  of  which  we  speak,  unless  one  is  willing  to  receive  a 
share  of  the  condemnation;  for  those  subject  to  them  look  with  stern 
criticism  upon  one  in  such  case,  and  grow  to  dislike  not  only  the 
ill-doer,  but  those  behind  the  ill-doer,  who  failed  in  early  life  to  draw 
the  fangs.  For  as  hard  a  part  of  it  as  any  is  that  it  could  in  such  meas- 
ure have  been  prevented  by  proper  effort  in  the  beginning.  It  is  some- 
thing that  comes  home  to  mothers  and  nurses  bitterly.  For  the  child  born 
with  delicate  and  sensitive  nerves  could,  with  the  watchful  care  it  had  a  right 
to  have,  have  been  spared  the  irritation  which  increased  the  sensitiveness ;  and 
that  child  received  the  irritation  and  that  child's  victims  bear  their  wrongs 
more  largely  than  otherwise  through  the  negligence  and  indulgence  of  guar- 
dians who  gave  to-day  without  thought  and  deprived  to-morrow  without  reason, 
who  found  it  easier  to  administer  a  slap  than  to  make  the  exertion  of  hindering 
the  necessity  of  the  slap  by  observation,  by  warding  off,  by  explanation,  by 
caressing — for  a  caress,  even  when  undeserved,  has  soothed  many  a  sore  spirit 
and  led  it  to  better  resolves.  Love  is  a  potent  shield  against  many  troubles, 
and  they  who  love  their  children  better  than  they  love  themselves  can  go  a 
great  way  in  triumph  in  the  effort  even  of  overcoming  nature.  And  certainly 
the  distress  occasioned  by  these  undisciplined  tempers  in  mature  life  is  never 
lessened  by  the  thought  that  it  might  all  have  been  hindered,  and  homes  that 
have  been  made  deserts  might  have  been  Edens. 


The  Sulky  Soul. 

For,  look  you,  you  rise  in  the  morning,  the  bird  singing  in  your  heart, 
sunshine  all  about  you,  with  never  an  echo  of  discord  in  your  thoughts,  meaning 
kindly  to  all  the  world ;  you  feel  well  and  young  and  happy ;  you  run  lightly 
down  the  stairs;  you  open  the  door  of  the  breakfast-room  gayly — and  as  if  a 
cloud  fell  on  you,  you  are  conscious,  in  a  flash,  of  a  different  moral  atmosphere, 


IT  IS  NOT  EASY  TO  THINK  IT  IS  NOT  AS  FINE  AS  IT  CAN  BE.  (481) 


482  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

one  of  blackness  and  gloom  and  bitterness,  let  the  sun  sparkle  on  glass  and 
silver  and  china  never  so  brightly.  What  is  the  matter  ?  No  one  knows.  One 
solitary  individual  of  the  family  has  retreated  into  a  shell — not  that,  indeed, 
for  if  it  were  merely  a  retreat  into  a  shell  it  could  be  endured  ;  but  it  would 
seem  nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  that  individual's  soul  has  left  its  body,  and 
has  been  replaced  for  the  time  being  by  a  sour  and  evil  spirit.  At  any  rate,  all 
this  blackness  and  bitterness  is  infused  into  the  bright  and  happy  atmosphere 
of  the  house,  till  it  is  as  dark  as  doom,  from  that  solitary  individual.  What 
occasioned  it  ?  Again,  nobody  knows.  It  is,  perhaps,  a  case  of  what  children 
used  to  call  "  getting  up  wrong  end  first."  Some  inexplicable  offense  has  been 
taken ;  some  unremembered  contradiction  has  rasped  the  sensitive  nerves  and 
been  brooded  over  in  the  watches  of  the  night  till  it  has  seemed  to  be  the  throw- 
ing down  of  a  gage ;  some  careless  remark  has  been  misinterpreted  and  kept 
rankling;  some  real  injury  has  been  unforgiven,  tmforgotten,  and  swollen  into 
quintuple  proportions ;  or  else  some  too  rich  morsel  has  produced  a  heavy  indi- 
gestion, and  hinc  ilia  lachrynics. 

We  are  not  quite  sure  that  a  mind  at  rest  with  itself,  conscious  of  no  blame 
in  the  matter,  can  have — if  it  is  able  to  overlook  the  annoyance  of  a  disturbed 
equilibrium  of  the  household — much  more  amusement  afforded  it  than  is 
afforded  by  the  conduct  of  such  a  person.  The  affected  haughtiness  of  compo- 
sure, the  cutting  silence,  except  for  now  and  then  more  cutting  speech,  which 
is  frequently  so  double-bladed  as  to  cut  the  cutter,  and  the  dignity  magnificent 
as  Malvolio's,  are  all  frequently  as  good  as  a  play  to  the  "  looker-on  in  Venice." 
For  the  person  who  is  in  the  sulks  unavoidably  betrays  all  the  workings  of  the 
mind  so  plainly  that  they  are  as  quickly  and  thoroughly  read  as  one  moving 
about  in  a  lighted  room  is  visible  to  the  watcher  imthe  dark  outside;  and  if 
surprise  at  the  pettiness  gives  pain,  entertainment  at  the  pettishness  quite 
counteracts  it,  provided  one  does  not  become  so  provoked  at  the  silly  childish- 
ness as  to  lose  temper  one's  self.  In  fact,  in  a  large  house  full  of  people,  when 
amusement  begins  to  flag,  a  bad  fit  of  the  sulks  does  not  come  in  at  all  amiss, 
and  it  would  lend  quite  an  agreeable  variety  in  the  way  of  fun  if  it  were  not 
that  one  is  apt  to  feel  as  the  ancients  used  to  do  concerning  one  "  possessed," 
that  the  person  is  sacred  in  its  possession  either  by  angelic  or  demoniac  power. 

If  this  were  the  end  of  it,  a  fit  of  the  sulks  would  not,  perhaps,  be  so  bad  as  it 
is  painted;  for  one  could  bear  having  silence  brought  about  where  there  used  to 
be  pleasant  converse,  could  bear  the  impending  sneer,  the  descending  fleer,  for  a 
day  or  so,  although  that  day  or  so  is  then  like  something  blotted  out  of  the 
year  by  an  ink  spot ;  but  the  sulking  disposition  is  also  the  suspicious  one ;  and 
one  is  conscious,  whenever  it  has  a  kindred  soul  to  answer  it  among  the  other 
inhabitants,  of  living  in  the  midst  of  conspiracy,  so  that  one  fears  to  grow  like 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  483 

one's  surroundings,  and  presently  suspects  hidden  meanings  in  innocent  words, 
evil  in  the  handling  of  a  chair,  poison  in  a  cup. 

Yet  when  we  have  made  the  best  of  it,  a  person  with  this  sulking  liability 
is  a  very  uncomfortable  companion,  in  no  way  to  be  relied  on  for  comfort  or 
enjoyment,  since  so  likely  to  fail  you  at  a  pinch.  And  it  seems  to  us  that  when 
the  fit  comes  on,  if  the  person  has  not  discretion  enough  to  withdraw  voluntarily, 
a  request  should  be  made  in  the  name  of  the  household  for  that  individual's  re- 
tirement to  the  secrecy  of  a  private  room  till  the  inner  weather  has  cleared;  for 
no  one  has  a  right,  through  any  reason  under  heaven,  to  poison  the  peace  of 
those  who  have  not  offended  in  order  to  retaliate  upon  the  one  who  does 
offend,  even  if  the  offense  is  real;  and  when  the  offense  is  imaginary,  the  sulk- 
ing party  is  no  better  than  the  insane,  and  can  not  complain  of  such  mild  re- 
straint. Of  course  it  goes  without  saying  that  when  the  poor  soul  descends  at 
last  with  a  smile,  no  notice  should  be  taken  of  the  past. 

Nevertheless,  every  wrong  brings  its  own  right,  and  the  sulker  is  punished 
in  the  sulks  themselves,  s'nce  the  gloom  and  bitterness  must  be  all  but  un- 
bearable to  the  person  who  suffers  them  inwardly,  and  finds  all  the  world  as 
black  as  if  followed  up  by  a  cuttle-fish.  And  the  punishment  is  the  more  felt 
because,  owing  to  the  very  law  of  compensations,  the  one  most  subject  to  the 
sulks  is  often  sparkling,  vivacious,  and  pleasure-loving  enough,  when  not 
jostled  out  of  bias,  to  make  light  hours  and  gladness  chase  each  other  about  the 
house. 


A  Remedy. 

But  if  our  lot  is  inextricably  mingled  with  that  of  these  owners  of  vicious 
tempers  we  have  two  things  to  do — one  to  help  them  to  overcome  the  demon 
that  possesses  them,  and  the  other  to  walk  in  the  paths  of  right  ourselves,  con- 
sidering these  among  the  trials  that  are  to  work  for  our  blessing  if  we  treat 
their  temptation  with  the  strength  that  overcomes.  For  no  man  lives  to  him- 
self alone.  The  world  is  such  a  vast  affair  with  its  mighty  physical  agencies 
and  its  interwoven  co-relations  of  vitality,  that  the  most  of  us  would  shrink 
back  awed  at  the  idea  that  we  had  anything  to  do  with  the  task  of  helping  it  on  its 
ascent  to  perfection.  All  the  more  as  our  first  thought  about  it  is  that  it  is  already 
perfection.  But  we  ourselve«  are  in  reality  a  part  of  this  beautiful*  world,  not 
parasites  on  it;  and  as  we  do  not  yet  claim  perfection  for  ourselves,  why  should 
we  claim  it  for  others,  or  for  the  less  noble  and  more  material  objects  of  nature? 

In  truth,  there  are  few  things  in  the  world  completely  perfect,  although 
everything  may  be  on  the  road  to  be  so.  The  wild  flower  it  is  possible  to  take 
and  train  to  fuller  development,  the  wild  fruit  may  be  grafted,  the  jewel  may 


484  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

be  set  free  and  faceted  and  polished,  the  savage  may  be  cultivated,  and  the 
earth,  we  know,  is  to  be  reduced  and  the  wilderness  made  to  blossom  like  a 
rose.  All  that  is  comparatively  simple  work,  though;  it  is  material,  and  to  be 
done  by  material  means  energized  by  the  spiritual  determination,  will,  pluck, 
endeavor. 

The  Perfection  of  the  World. 

It  is  not  easy  to  look  up  at  the  infinite  hue  of  the  sky  flooded  with  sunshine, 
and  think  it  is  not  as  fine  as  it  ever  can  be ;  to  look  up  through  the  deep  vaults  of 
night  and  measure  off  heaven  after  heaven  with  the  near  and  distant  stars,  and 
fancy  improvement  possible;  to  see  in  what  the  landscape  from  the  mountain- 
side, with  its  sea  of  hills,  its  long  levels,  and  its  melting  colors,  can  be  made  more 
glorious.  Yet  if  it  is  not  possible  to  our  eyes,  more  perfect  eyes  may  see  the 
need,  more  perfect  powers  be  shaping  the  means.  For  why  else  was  the  huge 
gaseousness  of  the  sun  compressed  and  its  planets  sent  rolling  off,  to  what  else 
are  we  to  suppose  the  earth  goes  forward  on  her  way  in  space,  to  what 
other  end  than  ultimate  perfection  can  the  whole  solar  system  be  moving  up 
with  all  its  stellar  mates  to  its  central  point,  and  the  great  pendulum  of  the 
starry  motions  be  swinging  backward  and  forward  with  boundless  ages  for  one 
motion,  but  that  at  each  long  swing  the  whole  shall  be  finer  than  it  was  before, 
that  the  little  earth  itself  become  the  fitter  for  the  throne  it  bears  in  the  thou- 
sand years  of  peace? 

And  if  this  is  so,  can  we  suppose  that  there  is  one  particle  of  matter  or  cf 
spirit  that  has  not  its  portion  of  the  work  to  do,  is  not  directed  upon  that  work, 
whether  consciously  or  not,  and  is  obedient  to  the  great  purpose  only  just  so 
far  as  it  obeys  this  direction? 

If  we  find  it  impossible  to  imagine  what  part  can  be  given  us,  with  our 
infinitesimally  small  powers,  in  the  perfection  of  the  universe  or  the  refining  of 
the  planet — for  we  know,  of  course,  it  does  not  mean  we  are  merely  to  keep  our 
flower  beds  bright  and  make  two  blades  of  grass  grow  where  one  grew  before 
— perhaps  we  may  find  it  worth  while  to  consider  whether  it  does  not  mean 
that  by  truth,  patience,  unselfishness,  through  countless  generations,  we  are  to 
transmute  the  very  dust  of  the  earth  into  the  dust  of  heroes,  martyrs  and 
saints.  Jf  the  earth  is  to  be  reduced,  are  we  not  a  part  of  the  earth?  and  is 
there  to  be  no  reducing  in  our  own  system  as  well  as  in  the  solar  system? 


Protoplasm  and  Dust. 

For  the  religionist  and  the  scientist  have  but  one  story  to  tell  when  it  is 
sifted  down  to  its  last  statement,  and  the  protoplasm  of  one  can  claim  to  be 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  485 

nothing  more  than  the  dust  of  the  earth  of  the  other.  Being  made  of  the  dust 
of  the  earth,  with  all  her  strange  currents  kneaded  through  us,  her  magnetic* 
her  electric,  her  finer  and  her  grosser  ones,  and  with  her  impetus  upon  us,  when 
we  return  that  dust  to  her  shall  it  have  gained  nothing  for  our  possession  of  it , 
shall  the  grosser  have  endured  no  refinement,  the  finer  not  have  become  finer 
still,  until  in  its  own  vast  period  all  the  substance  of  the  great  globe  itself  shall 
be  the  better  and  richer  for  the  life  our  souls  have  lived  in  it? 

Whatever  be  the  especial  part  of  the  work  assigned  to  humanity,  we  know 
that  some  work  it  is,  since  it  is  contrary  to  the  economy  of  nature,  manifested 
everywhere  else,  that  we  should  be  here  for  any  idle  purpose ;  and  all  we  have 
to  do  is  to  follow  the  open  passage  and  perform  the  work  we  find  at  hand,  feel- 
ing very  sure  that  if  we  are  doing  wrong  in  nothing  else,  we  are  doing  right  in 
this,  and  not  only  reducing  the  earth  and  our  portion  of  it,  but,  it  may  be, 
sending  out  some  of  the  vital  energy  of  our  well-doing  to  regions  beyond — who 
shall  say? 

Let  what  will  be  false  and  fanciful,  this  must  be  true — that  he  who  does 
persistent  wrong,  he  who  is  treacherous,  mean,  cowardly,  cruel,  animal,  and 
base,  is  rebellious  to  the  directing  power,  is  betraying  his  trust,  can  not  be 
helping  forward  the  great  ends  which  tend  only  to  light  and  goodness.  While 
just  as  true  is  it  that  he  who  is  pure  and  noble,  self-forgetting  and  faithful, 
gentle  and  sympathetic,  scorning  falsehood,  disdaining  sensualism,  can  not  but 
live  in  obedience  to  that  directing  power,  can  not  but  so  have  put  himself  into 
communication  with  all  the  channels  of  goodness  that  virtue  runs  like  the  blood 
in  his  veins,  and,  little  as  it  may  be,  he  lends  his  share  of  strength  to  the  work 
of  lifting  the  universe  toward  its  perfect  consummation,  although  it  be  as  in- 
sensibly as  any  single  ray  of  light  helps  in  bringing  about  the  dawn. 


Right  and   Light. 

For  if  we  had  no  other  instruction  we  should  know  by  instinct  and  obser- 
vation that  the  ways  of  right  were  the  ways  toward  light,  and  those  of  wrong 
toward  darkness.  We  know  how  smooth  truth  makes  the  way  for  our  feet,  and 
how  entangling  falsehood  is;  we  know  whether  curse  or  blessing  follows  theft; 
we  know  what  pleasure  we  receive  in  giving  pleasure,  what  absence  of  pleasure, 
to  say  the  least,  and  sometimes  what  suffering  of  remorse,  in  refusing  it ;  we 
know  how  cruelty  can  recoil  upon  ourselves  in  pain,  and  what  bodily  evil  and 
degradation  sensuality  drags  after  it,  and  if  there  were  no  other  monitor  to  tell 
us  of  the  heavenly  sweetness  and  light,  observation  of  these  facts  alone  might 
do  it.  It  is  easy,  then,  for  us  to  see  that  in  doing  right  every  individual  is 


486  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

"helping  to  work  out  the  Divine  purpose;  and  we  find  a  fresh  dignity  belonging 
to  the  humblest  soul  on  earth  when  we  think  of  the  share  it  bears  in  the  work — 
the  beggar- who  is  too  proud  to  steal  and  too  ill  to  work  sending  out  some  virtue 
to  wide  nature,  and  the  little  child  that  resists  the  temptation  of  the  sweetmeat 
jar  is  lending  his  mite  in  the  resistance  to  this  upward  flight  of  the  stars,  as 
relatively  as  the  saint  and  martyr  who  lays  down  his  life  for  his  faith.  It  gives 
us  all  a  proud  sense  of  value  ;  but  it  gives  us  at  the  same  moment  one  of 
humility,  as  we  remember  that  loathsome  beggar  and  little  child  can  bear  the 
burden  as  well  as  we,  and'  that  our  most  earnest  endeavor  at  great  crises  being 
to  us  exactly  what  their  earnest  endeavor  in  small  crises  is  to  them,  they  are 
transmuting  common  clay  into  heroic  dust  with  the  same  vigor,  and  are  lending 
their  energy  to  the  energy  of  the  stars.  For  circumstances  may  make  crises 
small  or  great,  but  we  can  only  fill  them  with  the  measure  of  our  nature  and 
will,  and  their  mite  may  help  forward  as  much  as  our  largess,  if  it  is  not,  indeed, 
their  largess  and  our  mite. 

•'  O  power  to  do  !  O  baffled  will  ! 

O  prayer  and  action  !  Ye  are  one. 
Who  may  not  strive  may  yet  fulfill 
The  harder  task  of  standing  still. 

And  good  but  wished  with  God  is  done." 


Transmuting  Clay. 

We  shall  do  little  then  in  our  effort  at  transmuting  clay  to  more  angelic 
material  till  we  have  attained  at  least  something  like  self-forgetfulness.  "  There 
is  no  cross,"  says  Fenelon,  "  when  there  is  no  self  to  suffer  under  it."  Those 
of  us  who  are  in  the  sad  habit  of  complaining  of  this  world  as  a  dreary  abode, 
a  dark  pilgrimage,  a  place  of  graves,  a  mere  halt  between  ante-natal  gloom  and 
the  gloom  of  the  tomb,  would  find  it  a  very  difficult  thing  if  for  any  portion  of 
the  time  while  we  are  in  it  we  could  but  forget  ourselves. 


Self  -  Forgetfulness. 

Forget  ourselves  ?  That  is,  to  remember  other  people  till  their  trials,  if 
they  do  not  crowd  out  our  personal  trials,  occupy  equal  place  with  them,  till 
their  identity  looms  up  and  corresponds  with  our  own  ;  or  simply,  and  in  better 
words,  to  love  our  neighbors  as  ourselves.  Without  doubt  we  are  privileged  to 
take  our  choices  of  the  neighbor,  the  point  being  only  to  make  sure  of  the 
neighbor  at  all  odds — the  neighbor  whose  benevolent  conducting  power  leads 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  487 

away  from  us  all  that  surplus  introspection  and  brooding,  all  that  'energy  for 
sympathy,  which,  directed  only  upon  our  own  affairs,  work  havoc  there. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  in  a  phase  of  existence  where  good  is  still  to 
be  wrought  out  of  evil  on  its  upward  way,  and  where  so  many  various  elements 
are  still  clashing,  that  any  individual  condition  can  be  perfectly  and  perma- 
nently happy.  The  little  child,  surrounded  by  love,  without  a  care,  the  young 
person  just  pausing  on  the  threshold  of  maturity,  to  whom  the  future  is 
wrapped  in  a  golden  haze  of  hope  and  expectation,  are  the  only  ones  to  whom 
life  seems  bright  and  faultless;  are  the  only  ones  who,  if  you  asked  them,  would 
be  positively  and  absolutely  sure  that  life  was  something  to  be  thankful  for;  the 
only  ones  filled  with  satisfaction  through  the  "  mere  Joy  of  living. " 


The   Child's  Troubles. 

But  to  some  even  of  these  young  beings  the  little  cloud  upon  the  horizon 
overshadows  that  heaven  of  theirs :  the  apparition  of  the  multiplication  table 
rises  and  shakes  its  horrid  hair,  in  its  train  a  long  procession  of  evils — the  fear- 
ful ten  to  be  carried,  the  awful  mystery  of  the  possessive  case,  the  necessity  of 
learning  how  to  spell  phihisic,  and  eventually  metempsychosis,  the  deprivation 
of  dainties  with  which  elder  people  provoke  younger  palates,  the  obligation  to 
work  when  sunshine  invites  to  play,  to  go  to  bed  just  as  the  lamps  are  lighted 
and  everything  is  bright  as  fairyland  down  stairs,  the  subjection  of  the  will  to 
another's  in  all  respects  and  at  all  times,  the  reaching  forward  to  that  haven  of 
rest,  the  condition  of  the  "grown  up:"  too  soon  do  these  troubles,  and  such  as 
these,  adulterate  the  happiness  with  which  the  child  opens  its  innocent  eyes 
upon  life,  and  too  soon  do  corresponding  troubles  bes^t  the  youth  or  maiden 
who  has  found,  so  far,  Pippa's  satisfaction  with  life,  but  to  whom,  as  the  years 
fly  by,  come  disappointments  in  love,  in  ^opes,  comes  blasting  of  ideas  and 
aims,  comes  the  sense  that  it  needs,  indeed, .  lother  world  to  complete  this. 


Another  World  to  Complete  This. 

And  so  it  happens  that  there  are  few,  if  any,  human  beings  among  us  who 
are  completely  and  rapturously  happy  for  any  length  of  time.  Lovers  in  each 
other's  arms,  benefactors  relieving  suffering,  mothers  clasping  their  babies, 
actor  and  poet  under  the  fresh  laurels  of  triumph — all  these  know  surely 
what  the  ecstasy  of  bliss  is.  But  the  child  leaves  the  mother's  arms,  the  bene- 
factors receive  ingratitude,  the  lovers  weary  or  deceive  or  die,  the  actor  or  the 
artist  finds  that  one  warm  heart  had  been  better  than  the  hollow  ring  of  all 


488 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


TO  GO  TO  BED  JUST  AS  THE  LAMPS  ARE  LIGHTED. 

those  plaudits;  and  the  ecstasy  with  all  has  been  brief.  And  that  is  what  the 
moan  is  about — that  it  can  not  last  to  all  time,  as  if  in  a  world  that  "spins  for- 
ever down  the  ringing  grooves  of  change,"  every  moment,  with  its  invisible 
forces,  must  not  pull  the  present  combination  apart  to  effect  a  new  one,  and  as 
if  it  were  anything  but  childish  kicking  against  a  wall  to  remonstrate  or  com- 
plain of  the  inevitable ;  for  by  submitting  and  trying  to  make  the  best  of  it, 
something,  at  any  rate,  is  to  be  gained. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  489 

It  being  conceded,  then,  that  every  lot  in  life  has  its  bitterness,  while 
'  laughter  shall  be  mingled  with  sorrow,  and  mourning  take  hold  of  the  end  of 
joy,"  that  corroding  cares  beset  the  possession  of  our  best  earthly  treasures,  it 
becomes  a  self-evident  truth  that  the  chief  relief  from  that  lot  is  to  cease  to 
consider  it.  "As  a  moth  doeth  by  a  garment,  and  a  worm  by  the  wood,  so 
the  sadness  of  a  man  consumeth  the  heart,"  says  the  old  Latin  Vulgate; 
and  we  can  forget  our  own  sadness  best  by  grieving  over  the  sadness  of 
another,  by  rejoicing  over  another's  joy. 


Changing  Our  Condition  for  Another's. 

In  the  one  case  we  shall  find  that  ours  ?.s  not  an  isolated  instance,  but  that 
each  soul  bends  beneath  the  weight  of  its  own  especial  cross,  and  that  light 
as  such  cross  seems  to  us  in  comparison  with  our  own,  yet  if  we  took 
the  temperament  and  situation  of  its  bearer  with  it,  we  should  find  it 
just  as  grievous.  We  see  some  woman  of  genius,  at  whose  voice,  with  whose 
beauty,  beneath  whose  power,  every  night  a  multitude  thrills;  we  con- 
template her  brilliant  destiny;  we  envy  her  while  we  admire  her;  we  wonder 
at  partial  fate,  and  laugh  at  the  idea  that  this  fortunate  creature  has  any  cross 
at  all  to  bear :  we  do  not  know  that  she  has  given  her  heart  and  her  happiness 
into  the  keeping  of  an  unworthy  man,  so  neglectful  and  so  base  that  her  honors, 
her  genius,  her  beauty,  are  mere  dross  to  her,  and  that  whenever  she  lies  down 
to  sleep  she  would  be  grateful  if  she  were  never  to  wake  up.  We  see  a  man 
before  whom  senates  tremble,  who  moves  a  nation  so  that  as  his  heart  beats, 
the  hearts  of  all  its  people  beat,  whose  name  resounds  to  the  farthest  parts  of 
the  earth.  We  ask  could  he  have  more  ? 

But  we  do  not  know  how  he  suffers  under  the  wide  slanders  that  falsely 
persecute  him,  and  while  they  seem  to  us  mere  gnat  stings,  eat  up  his  happi- 
ness like  a  canker.  Or  we  see  another,  on  whom  fortune  waits,  who  handles 
states  like  pawns,  who  is  the  personification  of  power,  whose  station  would  be 
to  us  as  impossible  as  Alnaschar's  dream.  We  do  not  know  the  secret  shame 
for  some  ill  deed  that  follows  him  like  a  Nemesis  ;  of  the  future  moment  of 
horror  that  darkens  all  the  splendid  moments  now,  when  at  his  death,  if  not 
before,  the  bubble  of  his  fair  fame  shall  be  pricked  ;  or  else  of  the  hidden 
trouble  in  his  home  that  makes  all  success  mean  failure ;  or  yet  of  the  unwhis- 
pered  disease  that  gnaws,  vulture-like,  at  his  vitals,  and  for  which  we  can  have 
no  pity  nor  sympathy,  since  it  is  death  to  a  politician's  hopes  to  be  known  to 
suffer  from  disease  at  all.  We  see  a  lovely  woman  rolling  by  in  her  luxurious 
coach :  her  velvets,  her  jewels,  her  flowers,  her  hosts  of  friends,  her  devoted 


490 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 


ROLLING     BY     IN    HER 
LUXURIOUS  COACH. 

husband,  her  life  at 
home  like  a  chapter 
in  the  beatitudes,  all 
move  us  to  imagine 
what  ill  thing  shall  befall  her,  and  so  make  matters  even.  We  do  not 
know  that  an  ill  thing  has  already  befallen  her;  that  her  way  has  lain  over 
graves,  that  her  heart  aches  and  longs  for  the  children  that  are  denied  her,  and 
that  without  them  all  the  rest  is  naught.  This — the  knowledge  of  all  this — is, 
perhaps,  but  bitter  consolation  for  one's  own  grief. 


Rejoicing  in  Another's  Joy. 

Yet,  nevertheless,  it  hinders  one  from  supposing  any  particular  malevo- 
lence on  the  part  of  the  powers  of  the  universe  directed  at  one's  self,  and  afforf  s 
one,  as  we  have  said,  the  opportunity — in  bringing  amusement  to  these  others, 
relief,  oblivion  for  the  moment — of  forgetting  one's  self  and  one's  own  burdei? . 
And  in  the  other  case — that  of  rejoicing  in  the  joy  of  the  fortunate  possessor  of 
that  blessing — the  very  exertion  of  casting  aside  envy,  of  refusing  to  listen  to 
the  evil  suggestion  concerning  injustice,  brings  back  a  shadow  of  that  joy  on 
us;  a  ray  of  happy  satisfaction,  it  may  be  also,  with  our  own  virtue,  which  is 
cheering,  and  gives  us  certainly  pleasant  and  heart- warming  sensations  that  we 
should  not  otherwise  have  known. 


STEPPING   STONES   TO   HAPPINESS.  491 

For  whether  we  are  glad  on  our  own  account  or  on  another's,  gladness  is 
gladness,  and  it  raises  the  barometer  of  the  soul  to  the  mark  of  fair  weather 
there ;  while  so  long  as  we  have  felt  that  throb  of  sympathy,  have  identified 
ourselves  with  that  other  joyous  soul,  so  long,  at  any  rate,  we  have  known  self- 
forgetfulness  and  have  mastered  happiness.  There  is  one  light  of  the  stars 
and  another  of  the  moon,  but  it  is  all  light,  whether  it  be  direct  or  reflected. 


The  Golden  Time  for  Love. 

It  is  Margaret  Sangster's  sweet  spirit  that  sees  in  all  times  the  time  to  for- 
get ourselves  and  love  our  neighbor,  saying : 

"  When  is  the  golden  time  you  ask —  , 

The  golden  time  for  love ; 
The  time  when  earth  is  green  beneath 

And  skies  are  blue  above ; 
The  time  for  sturdy  health  and  strength. 

The  time  for  happy  play, 
When  is  the  golden  hour?  you  ask ; 

I  answer  you,  'To-day.' 

To-day,  that  from  the  Maker's  hand 
Ships  on  the  great  world  sea 

As  stanch  as  ever  ship  that  launched 
To  sail  eternally ; 

To-day,  that  wafts  to  you  and  me 
A  breath  of  Eden's  prime, 

That  greets  us,  glad  and  large  and  free—- 
It is  our  golden  prime. 

For  Yesterday  hath  veiled  her  face. 

And  gone  as  far  away 
As  sands  that  swept  the  pyramids 

In  Egypt's  ancient  day. 
No  man  shall  look  on  Yesterday, 

Or  tryst  with  her  again ; 
Forever  gone  her  toils,  her  prayers, 

Her  conflicts,  and  her  pains. 
******* 
You  ask  me  for  the  golden  time — 

I  bid  you  seize  the  hour, 
And  fill  it  full  of  earnest  work, 

While  yet  you  have  the  power. 
To-day  the  golden  time  for  joy 

Beneath  the  household  eaves; 
To-day  the  royal  time  for  work. 

For  bringing  in  the  sheaves. 


492  STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

To-day  the  golden  time  for  peace, 

For  righting  older  feuds; 
For  sending  forth  from  every  heart 

Whatever  sin  intrudes. 
To-day  the  time  to  consecrate 

Your  life  to  God  above ; 
To-day  the  time  to  banish  hate, 

The  golden  time  for  love." 

Even  if  we  desire  the  boon  of  self-forgetfulness  for  no  special  grief  or  out- 
rage, for  no  worse  trouble  than  a  well-grown  disgust  of  ourselves,  a  sense  of 
fatigue  with  our  own  personality,  there  is  no  other  way  to  get  it  than  to  go  into 
the  personality  of  others.  The  anchorite  has  practiced  this  truth  in  desert 
caves,  ceasing  the  remembrance  of  his  unworthiness  in  the  contemplation  of 
beings  and  states  beyond  this  mortal  sphere  ;  the  dweller  in  cities  seeks  the 
crowd  to  lose  himself  there.  That  is  a  very  vain  and  very  shallow  nature  which 
is  so  satisfied  with  itself  as  to  need  no  change  of  view ;  for  so  imperfect  are  we 
yet  that  the  only  permanent  happiness  to  be  acquired,  the  only  tranquillity  of 
soul,  must  come  through  this  thorny  path  of  self-forgetfulness. 


On  Tranquil  Heights. 

Only  when  we  have  reached,  if  not  the  very  consummation  of  self-abnega- 
tion and  forgetfulness,  yet  at  any  rate  such  a  height  that  we  can  see  the  way 
clear  that  leads  to  the  heights  beyond,  will  our  eyes  be  opened,  and  will  we  see 
the  work  about  us  as  it  is,  and  see  our  fellow- wayfarers  as  they  are,  knowing, 
then,  that  full  often  and  all  unaware,  we  go  hand  in  hand  with  angels. 


Hand  in  Hand  with  Angels. 

Hand  in  hand  with  angels, 

Through  the  world  we  go; 
Brighter  eyes  are  on  us 

Than  we  blind  ones  know; 
Tenderer  voices  cheer  us 

Than  we  deaf  will  own; 
Never,  walking  heavenward. 

Can  we  walk  alone. 

Hand  in  hand  with  angels, 

In  the  busy  street, 
By  the  winter  hearth-fires — 

Everywhere — we  meet, 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  496 

Though  unfledged  and  songless, 

Birds  of  Paradise ; 
Heaven  looks  at  us  daily 

Out  of  human  eyes. 

Hand  in  hand  with  angels, 

Oft  in  menial  guise ; 
By  the  same  straight  pathway 

Prince  and  beggar  rise. 
If  we  drop  the  fingers 

Toil-imbrowned  and  worn, 
Then  one  link  with  heaven 

From  our  life  is  torn. 

Hand  in  hand  with  angels: 

Some  are  fallen — alas! 
Soiled  wings  trail  pollution 

Over  all  they  pass. 
Lift  them  into  sunshine ! 

Bid  them  seek  the  sky  ; 
Weaker  is  your  soaring 

When  they  cease  to  fly. 

Hand  in  hand  with  angels ; 

Some  are  out  of  sight, 
Leading  us,  unknowing, 

Into  paths  of  light. 
Some  dear  hands  are  loosened 

From  our  earthly  clasp, 
Soul  in  soul  to  hold  us 

With  a  firmer  grasp. 

Hand  in  hand  with  angels — 

'Tis  a  twisted  chain 
Winding  heavenward,  earthward, 

Linking  joy  and  pain. 
There's  a  mournful  jarring, 

There's  a  clank  of  doubt, 
If  a  heart  grows  heavy, 

Or  a  hand's  left  out. 

Hand  in  band  with  angels 

Walking  every  day  ; — 
How  the  chain  may  lengthen 

None  of  us  can  say ; 
But  we  know  it  reaches 

From  earth's  lowliest  one 
To  the  shining  seraph 

Throned  beyond  the  sun. 


494  STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Hand  in  hand  with  angels ! 

Blessed  so  to  be  ! 
Helped  are  the  helpers ; 

Giving  light,  they  see. 
He  Who  aids  another 

Strengthens  more  than  one; 
Sinking  earth  he  grapples 

To  the  Great  White  Throne. 

Earth  indeed  sinks  from  us  when  we  have  gone  so  high.  We  wonder  at 
the  trifles  we  have  pursued,  and  at  the  false  relations  these  trifles  have  held  for 
us — the  honors,  the  achievements,  the  riches. 


The  Riches  of  Angels. 

"What,"  asks  Lucy  Larcom,  "what  can  an  angel  regard  as  riches? 
Certainly  nothing  that  is  appreciable  by  our  mortal  senses — not  such  things  as 
we  see  with  covetous  eyes,  and  touch  with  miserly  hands,  and  lock  away  from 
thieves  in  tomb-like  coffers.  Milton  has  drawn  for  us  a  fancy  sketch  of  one 
such  sordid  angel,  among  the  rebellious  host : 

'  Mammon,  the  least  erected  spirit  that  fell 

From  heaven,  for  even  in  heaven  his  looks  and  thoughts 

Were  always  downward  bent,  admiring  more 

The  riches  of  heaven's  pavement,  trodden  gold, 

Than  aught  divine  or  holy  else  enjoyed 

In  vision  beatific.' 

"  But  the  messengers  of  God,  who  fly  abroad  on  His  errands  through  the 
universe,  cannot  travel  with  their  winged  thoughts  weighted  by  any  material 
burden.  An  angel's  riches  are  the  messages  he  bears — messages  of  love  and 
truth  from  the  heart  of  God  to  His  creatures.  The  messenger  knows  that  he 
is  the  bearer  of  inestimable  wealth,  but  he  has  no  desire  regarding  it  except 
that  it  may  reach  its  destination,  and  bless  the  souls  for  whom  it  was  intended. 
If  any  selfish  hoarding  of  truth  and  love  were  possible,  the  truth  would  turn 
to  falsehood,  and  love  to  hate — and  heaven  would  be  hell.  The  heavenly  riches 
must  be  given  away,  freely  as  the  air  we  breathe,  or  it  is  no  longer  heavenly. 
Again  the  plural  gives  the  pronoun  its  value.  '  All  things  are  yours. '  We 
are  not  the  real  possessors  of  things  earthly  or  heavenly,  while  we  persist  in 
saying,  'They  are  mine;'  the  only  permanent  claim  we  have  upon  them  is 
that  they  are  ours.  God  never  gives  us  anything  for  our  individual  self 
alone.  The  divineness  of  His  gifts  is  proved  by  our  desire  to  share  them  with 
others.  It  is  only  perishable  objects  that  we  can  hold  selfishly,  and  in  so  hold- 
ing them,  they  and  we  perish  together." 


STEPPING    STONES   TO    HAPPINESS.  495 

True  Happiness  at  Last. 

It  is  only  the  soul  that  has  reached  these  tranquil  levels  where  self  has 
been  over-lived,  and  the  love  of  man  and  the  love  of  God  has  filled  it  with  seren- 
ity, that  can  know  true  happiness,  that  has  ceased  from  concern,  that  can  live 
unashamed  before  its  own  scrutiny  and  assoiled  before  the  heavenly  gaze;  and 
so  having  lived,  so  can  die— die  as  sweetly  and  as  calmly  as  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
beautiful  poem,  "A  Wish,"  it  is  desired  to  die,  passing  from  one  life  to  another, 
and  from  one  mansion  of  the  Father's  house  to  the  next. 


Matthew  Arnold's  Wish. 

"  I  ask  not  that  my  bed  of  death 
From  bands  of  greedy  heirs  be  free  ; 

For  these  besiege  the  latest  breath 
Of  fortune's  favored  sons,  not  me. 

I  ask  not  each  kind  soul  to  keep 
Tearless,  when  of  my  death  he  hears  ; 

Let  those  who  will,  if  any,  weep  ! 
There  are  worse  plagues  on  earth  than  tears. 

I  ask  but  that  my  death  may  find 

The  freedom  to  my  life  denied  ; 
Ask  but  the  folly  of  mankind, 

Then,  then  at  last,  to  quit  my  side. 

Spare  me  the  whispering,  crowded  room. 
The  friends  who  come,  and  gape,  and  go, 

The  ceremonious  air  of  gloom — 
All  that  makes  death  a  hideous  show  ! 

Nor  bring,  to  see  me  cease  to  live, 
Some  doctor  full 'of  phrase  and  fame, 

To  shake  his  sapient  head  and  give 
The  ill  he  cannot  cure  a  name. 

Nor  fetch,  to  take  the  accustomed  toll 
Of  the  poor  sinner  bound  for  death, 

His  brother  doctor  of  the  soul, 
To  canvass,  with  official  breath, 

The  future  and  its  viewless  things — 

That  undiscovered  mystery 
Which  one  who  feels  death's  winnowing  wings 

Must  needs  read  clearer,  sure,  than  he ! 


496 


STEPPING   STONES   TO    HAPPINESS. 

Bring  none  of  these !  but  let  me  be, 

While  all  around  in  silence  lies, 
Moved  to  the  window  near,  and  see 

Once  more  before  my  dying  eyes, 

Bathed  in  the  sacred  dews  of  morn 
The  wide  aerial  landscape  spread — 

The  world  which  was  ere  I  was  born, 
The  world  which  lasts  when  I  am  dead ; 

Which  never  was  the  friend  of  one, 
Nor  promised  love  it  could  not  give, 

But  lit  for  all  its  generous  sun, 
And  lived  itself,  and  made  us  live. 

There  let  me  gaze,  till  I  become 
In  soul  with  what  I  gaze  on  wed ! 

To  feel  the  universe  my  home; 
To  have  before  my  mind — instead 

Of  the  sick  room,  the  mortal  strife, 

The  turmoil  for  a  little  breath — 
The  pure  eternal  course  of  life, 

Not  human  combatings  with  death. 

Thus  feeling,  gazing,  let  me  grow 

Composed,  refreshed,  ennobled,  clear; 

Then  willing  let  my  spirit  go 
To  work  or  wait  elsewhere  or  here! " 


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